The Garden Of Vice: Complete and Revised
by ilyahna
Summary: A casefile with a serial killer, some original characters, some mystery, some angst, some resolution, and a little bit of romance. AUOC. Part II of the epilogue is up... now it's really over. Slow Burn is the less dark sequel.
1. Inundation

There are 32 chapters to this story: the epilogue is chapter 31 and 32 and I'm actually still working on that. The story itself is complete. If anyone has suggestions for the epilogue, feel free to offer them.

For those not familiar with this story, it is a casefile and a mystery, and a story about healing. It was begun before many things were revealed in season six concerning Goren's mother, so it might also be considered an alternate universe fic- I theorized what might happen after her death before she ever appeared on camera. There's a serial killer, some original characters, some angst, some resolution, and a little bit of romance (OC- this is not a ship!).

Some of you have already seen this story, more than once, as I've put it up in parts and taken it back down for several reasons. Now that I've finally finished it, I feel differently about it, so I'm going to leave it up this time. I've edited and revised some of my earlier style, so that it is a good bit less "purple," as some suggested might suit it. Honestly, I am seeking no praise, but simply wanted to share something that took me more than a year and a lot of effort to complete. Hopefully it will be of some enjoyment to a few, and I apologize to anyone offended by this story's third posting! I bear no one animosity from the past.

I cannot post this in completion, also, without thanking Mary and Jenn. You know why, ladies. I love you both.

Lastly, please be kind if you choose to review. I have feelings too. ALSO- There are some pictures (drawings) of the characters on my website,as well as writing that won't be on ff net. Link to it from my profile page.-

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Chapter One: Inundation

Sunday, December 27, 2007, 5:45 AM

Robert Goren

He could feel the cold through the glass. It was the bitter chill of the last vestige of a winter night; the lonely, familiar moments when the sun was both as long absent as it was soon to rise. The sky beyond the window was that ambiguous twilight that blanketed all wakeful cities, and he couldn't tell if clouds remained from the previous day.

He stifled a deep sigh. The heavy sensation of anxiety that seemed to radiate through his chest, making it hard to breathe, was more persistent than ever. He consciously unclenched his fingers from the arm of the chair, and rubbed his hands across his face, feeling the unchecked weekend growth of beard. It would be more grey now, than black. More grey, like he felt.

He glanced across the room, finding the red glow of the numbers on the alarm clock easily in the darkness. That it was ten until six in the morning was no surprise to him. Insomnia was no longer an occasional inconvenience, but a way of life.

The digital fifty became fifty-one, and he looked away. His eyes wandered over the shadows of the bed. She was there, the waitress from the restaurant, hidden beneath the blankets next to an empty space that had been him. A frown creased his brow. It felt wrong, to look where she lay and experience not the least emotion beyond curiosity at his own motivation. _Why was he here?_ What had he been thinking, when he had told her he would stay? There had been times, in the past, when he might have truly wanted to. When he might have felt something. Anything. But passion that was anything more than the infatuation of a moment had drifted away with sleep, with time, with loss, and he could not conceive of the energy to pursue it.

He had been dressed for hours, sitting in the chair by the window. In retrospect, he realized that he could not recall what thoughts had passed through his mind as he'd stared out at the city. It was a peculiar and disconcerting state of blankness that substituted too often for sleep. He cast another look through the glass, thinking that perhaps the sky was a different shade of yellow-grey than it had been a moment before.

Six A.M.

He stood, careful that his shoes made no sound against the hardwood floor. He lifted his coat gently off the back of the chair, keeping his hand over the pocket where he'd left his keys and the phone that he'd turned off sometime in the past afternoon. He realized with some relief that he'd never given her his number; the previous night had been a product more of wine and convenience than planning.

The thought that he would have to find another place to eat on Saturday nights fluttered across his consciousness. In the past, such evidence of his own callousness would have bothered him, but now he took only brief notice of it as it was buried beneath the strange thing that he had become since his mother's death.

He glanced once more at the bed and the sleeping form within it, and just as quickly away. Then he turned, and without pausing again, he slipped silently out the door and into the growing dawn.

-

-

Sunday, December 27, 2007, 8:30 AM

Alex Eames

Alex set the nearly empty sugar container aside and stirred her coffee. She dropped the spoon on the counter without regard for the dark beads of liquid that accompanied it. She took a long drink- it was at best lukewarm – and picked up her cell phone with her free hand. She flipped it open and scrolled to her text message inbox. It was still empty. Just like her incoming call log. Taking a deep breath, she pressed the 'send' button to redial his number. It went straight to voicemail, again. Just like it had the other twenty times she had called him since Christmas Day. She disconnected without leaving a message, frustration a tightness in her throat.

She checked again to make sure that the phone was set to vibrate when it rang, and then snapped it shut, shoving it into the pocket of her pants. She drained her cup and left it beside the spoon, not caring about the stain that was forming on her white countertop.

She was worried about her partner.

Grabbing her keys from the kitchen table, she pulled her coat on as she walked out the door. The air was frigid, laden with moisture. She felt her muscles shivering as she climbed into her Honda, and she wasn't sure it was only from the cold. She slammed the door, cranked up the heat, and waited impatiently for the frost coating the windshield to melt. Leaning her head against the seat, she willed herself to relax.

It hit her then, how much Bobby had changed. He had always been brooding, prone to dark periods. But that was just his personality…part of his brilliant eccentricity, and it was something that she had seen to always work _for_ him, and not against him. His intuitive empathy put serial killers behind bars. But lately…he seemed to have caved in on himself.

It had started more than a year before, when he'd found out that his mother was dying. The stress of her illness, coupled with the demands of their job, had turned him into a bare shadow of the charismatic, sharp-witted partner she remembered from their first years in major case together. Even that period, though, was better than this. At least then, he still seemed driven by a purpose. Now, two months after she'd stood beside him at his mother's funeral, it was Bobby that was the ghost.

She knew he wasn't sleeping. She couldn't remember when she had seen him without those dark circles underscoring his eyes. He had lost enough weight that even Ross had asked her about his health. The passion he had once shown for the work they did was gone. He had loved being a detective once, she knew. Now she had the impression that his job was an overwhelming burden for him. That interacting with anyone at all was a burden.

The frost had turned to rivulets of liquid that trickled down the windshield. She cleared it away with a quick swipe of the wiper blades, and pulled out of her driveway. Knowing that she was moving toward his apartment, toward the possibility of knowing something one way or another, made her heart beat faster.

_How had it gotten this bad?_ That she could imagine her partner, her friend, could harm himself? Normally, a long weekend without talking to him wouldn't have worried her. This weekend, though, had been Christmas. It had taken her two weeks of playful cajoling and eventual earnestness to get him to agree to go with her to her family dinner on Friday afternoon. When he finally consented, he'd actually smiled. It was the first time she'd seen him smile in more than six months. He had even talked about cooking something. Made her promise not to buy him anything. Asked if her nephew would be there.

And then he hadn't shown up. She'd called him, and left him a string of messages that ranged from curious to worried. She'd told her family she would be late, and she'd gone to look for him. She'd checked his apartment, the coffee shop across the street, the library, and, although without much hope, One Police Plaza. She'd left him a note, on his door, telling him she wasn't angry with him for deciding not to come, if he would just call her. Let her know he was ok. But there had been nothing, and his phone had been off since sometime the day before. She couldn't shake the thought that the holidays, the first without his mother, without any family at all, had been too much for him, and she hated that she could see that in him now. It scared her.

The miles between her house and his apartment in Queens were much longer than she remembered them, although the same thirty minutes passed during the drive, just as it had the night before, and the day before that. _What would she do if he…_ She shook her head to rid herself of the thought, and jumped suddenly as her pocket vibrated. The ringing became audible, louder, as she fumbled the phone out with one hand. Her car listed dangerously to the side, and she jerked it straight as she lifted the caller I.D. into view.

She heaved a discouraged sigh, and answered the call.

"Yes, Captain?" She tried not to sound irritated.

Ross' pause indicated she hadn't been entirely successful. "Alex, I'm sorry. I know this is your down time, but I need you and Goren in here ASAP."

"I'm on my way into the city now," she said, and then, with a knot of anticipation in her stomach, she added: "Have you called Goren?"

"You call him," Ross said, and she felt a surge of indignation at Ross' tone. The captain and her partner had never particularly favored one another, and Ross' ambivalence toward Bobby had grown proportionately since that episode in the squad room the previous Thanksgiving. The one that had almost cost Bobby his job.

"We'll be there," she said, and hoped to God it was the truth. She couldn't very well tell Ross that her partner was in the wind.

"I'm counting on it," the captain said, and the connection went dead.

Alex felt frustrated tears in her eyes as she tossed the phone into the seat beside her. Distracted by the phone call, she almost missed the street. Braking quickly, she ignored the screech of tires from the car behind her and the irate sound of a horn and turned toward his apartment.

It was a block away from the four story brownstone where her partner lived that she saw it, and a rush of icy relief flooded through her. His dark blue '65 Mustang GT Fastback, the car he and Lewis had been working on restoring almost since she'd known him. It had definitely _not_ been there the last several times she had driven past his apartment. She pulled in just behind it and yanked the keys out of the ignition in the same moment that she was stepping out of the car. Passing Bobby's vehicle, she pressed her hand against the hood, and was elated to feel heat from a recently active engine.

She almost ran the block to his apartment, taking the front stairs two at a time. As she grasped the handle of the lower level door, she wondered suddenly what her hurry was now. Had she not just established that he was alive? Taking another deep breath, she mentally composed herself before she pulled the door open.

She froze.

He was right there, his mailbox open, envelopes in his hands. For a moment he remained absorbed, filing one envelop to the back of the stack, and tossing another in the trashcan near his feet. Then the cold breeze from the open door hit him, and he turned his head to look at her.

Alex couldn't place the expression on his face. It was almost as though she wasn't looking at Robert Goren at all. He looked like he hadn't shaved all weekend. His hair was in a state of disarray; the grey shot through the black was much more pronounced against the grey lining his jaw. His dark eyes were bloodshot, and she had the immediate impression that whatever he'd been doing these past few days, it had involved alcohol. Apprehension filled her anew.

"Bobby…" she began, but paused, not knowing what to say to him. In that moment of silence, Bobby looked quickly away from her and slammed his mailbox shut. He shoved his mail into the inner pocket of his coat.

"I'm fine," he snapped, and he moved away from her, taking several of the stairs toward his floor while Alex stood in the door way, stunned by the unexpected vehemence of his tone. Recovering herself, she opened her mouth to say something, anything, to him, when he suddenly stopped. She saw his grip on the banister constrict, the knuckles turning white for a short second before relaxing. Then he turned, and eyes downcast, he descended the stairs until he was before her again.

"I'm sorry," he said, and his haunted eyes fluttered up to hers briefly before returning to the floor.

Without thinking, Alex reached out to touch his arm. He flinched, and she pulled her hand back.

"Are you ok?" she asked him, and she knew she sounded worried. She couldn't help it. "I thought you were coming out to my family's house Friday, Bobby. When you didn't show up I thought…"

He looked up then, searching her face with an expression that was a mixture of sadness and annoyance. He didn't bother to ask her what she had thought. It hung in the air between them, and he didn't deny it. It made Alex sick to her stomach.

He looked away again, at the wall.

"Like I said, Alex… I'm sorry. I really…intended to be there. But…" he trailed off.

"I came by," she told him. "Where were you?"

Now his hand moved to his face, his long fingers pressed against his forehead. Her trained detective's eye caught the slight coloring of his ashen cheeks. With a start, she _knew_, and she wondered again what was happening to her partner. He had the soul of true romantic, always deferential to the more sensitive nature of women. The idle, one-night stand was not at all Bobby's style, and she could see that awareness in the mixture of grief and embarrassment on his face.

Her heart swelled with sympathy for him, and this time when she reached out to touch him, he merely closed his eyes as her hand rested gently against his upper arm.

"Look... don't worry about Friday Bobby," she said, not knowing what the right thing to say was. "I'm just…glad you're ok." She dropped her hand, and he looked at her again. He didn't speak, but in his eyes was a silent gratitude.

She waved the hand that clutched her cell phone. "The captain wants us downtown…something's going on and he needs us."

She thought he looked relieved, but couldn't be sure if it was that she had changed the subject or that the prospect of having something to occupy his attention appealed to him. He glanced furtively then at his disheveled clothing.

"I need to…take a shower. Change." He was still embarrassed, and she felt a slight blush creep into her own cheeks. She backed out of the still open doorway a step.

"I'll meet you across the street in half an hour, at the coffee place," she said, giving the words the upward lilt of a question.

He was already moving, up the stairs toward his apartment. He waved his hand in mute acknowledgement and disappeared onto the second floor.

Alex let go of the door, and it closed softly.

-

He read her note standing in front of the kitchen counter. The burden of heaviness settled more thickly in his chest, and he could hear the ragged sound the air made in his lungs as he sucked in a deep breath. He laid the paper, lined with her neat handwriting, on the counter, but picked it up again just as quickly, crushed it in his hand and then let it fall. The gesture did nothing to absolve his guilt however, or his anger. In fact, it made it worse.

His eyes fell to the glass cabinet above the sink. He took the few steps across the small space, and without thinking about what he was doing, he found the bottle in his hand. He took a long drink, and it was like fire in his throat, his empty stomach. With the spreading warmth, Alex's words returned. _The Captain needs us downtown…_

He looked at the bottle in his hand, actually seeing if for the first time. The squat, thick glass of it. The numbers 1792, etched in white across it, swimming against the amber liquid inside. The memory struck him suddenly, and it was cold, unwanted. He was ten years old again, and his father was pouring himself a drink. This drink.

He dropped the bottle in the sink. The thick glass made a harsh, clattering sound against the porcelain, but settled unbroken, balanced at a tilt on its curved side. He stared at it for a moment, disgust and fear vying for supremacy as it embodied the compelling parallels of his recent life. With one hand, he grasped it again and upended it, sending all that remained down the drain. It was nine in the morning.

He walked to the bathroom in a haze, shutting the door and turning the shower to hot. His hands shook as he undressed in the enveloping steam. _Who was he?_ There was such bitterness within him, such grief, and he had no place to hide.

The water was scalding, but he didn't care. He tilted his head back beneath the stream and let it run across his face. He thought about the look on his partner's face. The realization. The surprise. He thought about his mother, and the promises his father had broken. The nights he didn't come home, and the scent of other women surrounding him when he did.

He had spent so many years of his life hating his father. Angry at the void his abandonment had created, bitter in his later years at the lack of security he had felt as a child. As an adult, he had tried to be something else for others, and for his mother. Something reliable, something honorable. Not his father. Not his older brother.

In the end, though, his mother had still loved the man who had left her behind, and the son that reminded her so much of him. Not Bobby. Not the resentful, spiteful boy that had locked her in an institution and refused to help his brother, long since given to a gambling addiction and years in the wind. His mother hadn't much of an estate when she'd died- a little money left over from the house his parents had sold after the divorce so many years before- but she'd made a point to leave her younger son out of her will. It wasn't that he cared about the money. He didn't. He'd known that she detested the institution, but he'd felt he didn't have a choice. He had to work to support himself, and there was no way he could have taken care of her alone. His older brother was not to be depended on, and it was, ironically, because he was never there that their mother blamed only Bobby for her discontent.

But he had given up more than she knew for her. The army had been like a refuge from the chaos of his younger life. Structure and order where none had ever been. A sense of safety, and of being significant. Valued. But his mother's schizophrenia had worsened, and then she'd vanished. His father, his brother, couldn't be bothered to find her, and so it had fallen to him. A compassionate discharge brought him back to New York City, a place synonymous with the turmoil of his past, and he'd been her shield from the world from that day, thirteen years ago when he'd found her wandering the streets of lower Manhattan. The institution had been for her own good, but she'd never seen it that way.

He turned the water off, unsure how long he'd been there, but his skin was reddened from the heat.

And he still didn't feel clean.

Stepping out, he wrapped a towel around his waist, and pushed the door open to release the steam. It was a few moments before it cleared. Wiping the residual moisture from the chill glass of the mirror, he stared into his reflection.

He was seeing what Alex had seen. The tired eyes. The thinner face, desperately in need of a shave.

He lathered shaving cream between his hands and applied it, and then he picked up the straight razor from the back of the sink. He paused, mid-motion, and remembered what Alex had said.

_When you didn't show up, I thought…_

He glanced at the razor, the sharp metal edge. _Could he?_

Then he raised it to his face, and slid it carefully along his jaw line. His mind was empty for a moment, without an answer, as he gave himself over to the monotonous process, but as a more familiar visage of himself, younger and less unkempt, reappeared in the mirror, he found he was thinking again of his father. Of the nights out, the restaurants, the bourbon, the women.

The razor scraped once more along his neck, and clattered to the sink.

His eyes met their likeness in the mirror.

Then his fist connected with the glass, and his reflection splintered into a thousand pieces.

-

Alex shredded the empty sugar packet while she stared out the window. It was raining now. An icy, dismal winter rain. She hated the weather this time of year. Just the opposite of her partner, who loathed the sticky, hot New York summers and seemed more alive in the cold air.

Or…he had at one time.

She sighed deeply, frowning, and felt a headache coming on. It was probably from the excessive amount of coffee that she had consumed in the last twenty-four hours. She hadn't slept well over the weekend, worrying about Bobby.

Taking another sip, she glanced again at the door of his building. He had still not appeared. Checking her watch, she noted with some unease that forty-five minutes had passed since he'd gone upstairs to shower.

Those moments at the bottom of the stairs replayed themselves in Alex's mind. She had been worried about him before, when she knew he wasn't sleeping well, and because he could seem to find no respite after his mother's death. But things were worse than she had thought, and it terrified her.

She'd seen the acknowledgement and the dread in his eyes when he'd recognized the surprise on her face. Her surprise at realizing where he'd been, what he'd done the night before. He would know that she would think of his father, because that was the way he had described him to her. Bobby's father had been the sort of man that used women. Her partner had told her one night, in a dark mood inspired by something Nicole Wallace had said to him, that part of the reason he was forty-five and still single was that he was terrified of becoming his father. Of doing to the woman he was with, what his father had done to his mother.

If he thought now that he was on that path, it might be enough to push him over the edge. She'd seen that in his face today.

Shoving her chair back, she resolved to give him only as much additional time as it took her to stand in line again at the counter to buy him a cup of coffee. Then she was going up there.

While she waited, she continued to check over her shoulder. In her anxious, caffeine saturated state, the sudden vibration of the cell phone in her pocket jolted her, and she almost dropped her cup. She snatched it out and, looking at the caller ID, she bit her lip for a moment and considered not answering it. But then he'd probably try to call her partner, and that was something she intended to avoid on Bobby's behalf.

"Hi Captain," she said, covering the mouthpiece as she reached the counter. She mouthed an order to the clerk and held up two fingers.

"Eames. Did you get in touch with your partner?"

"Yes sir. I woke him up, so he needed a few to shower." She handed the girl behind the counter a ten and waved off the change.

"Change of plans," Ross was saying. "I'm going to meet you there. I'll send a text with the address, all right? You can make it in under a half hour, I hope."

Eames drained her almost empty cup, tossed it in the trash, and holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder, maneuvered the two full cups into her left hand. "We'll be there," she said, glancing out the window again.

"See that you are," Ross said, and hung up.

Alex growled irritably and shoved the phone back in her pocket. She grabbed a handful of sugar packets and pocketed them too. The captain's phone call increased her earlier resolve to check on her partner, and she made for the door.

She was halfway across the street, the frigid rain plastering her hair against her cheeks, when the door to Bobby's building opened and he emerged, looking tired, but exponentially more presentable. He met her at the bottom of the stairs, releasing the catch on the umbrella that she hadn't thought to bring. He held it over them both, and she exhaled in relief, her breath a white cloud in the cold air.

"Ross just called again," she told him, holding out the coffee she'd bought for him. He mumbled his appreciation, and when he took it from her, Alex saw the bandage twined around his hand. Several fine, fresh abrasions traced the lower parts of two fingers and his knuckles.

"What did you do, Bobby?" she asked in alarm.

He shook his head. "Broke something," he muttered. "It's ok."

She stared at him, wondering what he'd put his fist through. The thoughts from moments before in the coffee shop came back to her. He sipped his coffee, avoiding her eyes, and she thought he looked ashamed, which didn't suit him. She wanted to tell him that he was a good person, that he was not his father, but there, standing on the sidewalk, wasn't the right time.

He pulled his cell phone out the pocket of his black trench coat then, opened it, and pressed a button. It beeped, and she realized he'd left it off until that moment. She watched him scroll through his text-messages and he raised an eyebrow. Alex wondered just how many of the messages were from her.

When he closed the phone and returned it to his pocket, he looked at her for a long moment. Then, softly, he said: "Thank you."

She opened her mouth to ask him "for what," but realized what he'd meant before she spoke. _Thank you for caring_. The magnitude of the loneliness in his words almost broke her heart.

"Bobby…" she began, a thousand things she would like to say to him, to comfort him. But he turned away, nodding down the street where her car was parked.

"Let's go," he said, and she had hurry to stay beneath the umbrella.

-

Sunday, Dec 27, 2007, 10:46 A.M.

Detectives Goren and Eames

South Harlem

-

Ross was waiting for them at the top of the stairs, arms crossed and a narrow look in his eyes. Behind him, the third floor hallway of the decaying Harlem complex crawled with grim-faced CSU techs, and Eames found herself trying to read the severity of the crime scene in their expressions. No matter how much death she had seen in her career, it never got any easier.

The captain hovered outside the doorway, an obstacle they had to first circumvent.

"Thanks for coming, guys," he said, but his tone was a little sharper than one implying genuine appreciation. It was a tone Eames had heard a lot of in the last year.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Goren reach the landing and pause beside her, leaning to one side to stare around Ross into the apartment.

"You pulled this one because Frank Crawford from the two-three recognized a similar M.O. from a case he worked a year ago."

Goren straightened at that, his attention riveted. "A year ago? Is there any connection between the victims?"

Ross shrugged. "As far as Crawford can see, there's nothing, but it needs to be checked out."

Eames raised her eyebrow at that comment. The captain had a propensity for suggesting how the two detectives should do their jobs that had always galled her. She knew it got under her partner's skin even more. "Who're the vics?" she asked, herself peering around Ross into the apartment. A worn, plaid patterned couch was all that was visible from her angle.

Ross took a small spiral notepad from his front shirt pocket. "Jhosa Moore and his son, Damien. The kid was only twelve. Mom came home from a third shift job and found the bodies. Their daughter was still in her room, asleep. Unharmed. They're both downstairs." The captain looked up, seeing his words being transferred into Goren's leather binder. Eames saw Ross' brow furrow, and she glanced at her partner. The barest hint of red traced the bandage on the hand he wrote with. She held her breath.

Goren, probably feeling the captain studying him, paused, and looked up. Ross nodded toward his bandaged hand.

"Rough weekend, Goren?"

A sudden, hot fury boiled in Eames' chest at Ross' terse off-handedness. She saw her partner's eyes narrow very slightly.

"I cut myself shaving," he said with complete solemnity, and despite herself, Eames let out the breath she had been holding in an amused wheeze. Ross glared at Goren, who snapped his binder shut and ducked around the captain into the apartment.

Ross glanced over his shoulder as the taller detective passed him, but said nothing in his wake. He looked back to Eames and raised a black eyebrow.

"Your partner looks like he hasn't slept in days," he said, and the expression of doubt and foreboding that he often wore when he spoke about Goren descended his aquiline features.

Eames shrugged. "Bobby's never been one to get much sleep. And he took his mother's death pretty hard. But he'll be fine." The captain cornering her about her partner made her acutely uncomfortable. Especially when she had to lie.

Ross didn't look at all convinced, and Eames sensed that the issue would be revisited later. But for the moment, he glanced at his watch and said: "I have to meet with the Chief of D's, but talk to Crawford about the Eldridge case he worked a year ago. He can point you toward the similar elements of the M.O."

She nodded, and Ross glanced once more over his shoulder at the activity before he took to the stairs, calling back to remind Eames to keep him updated.

Eames sighed, and shouldered into the apartment past a departing CSU tech. She immediately found her partner, crouched over the body of a middle aged man…black, Hispanic…she couldn't tell. He was covered in blood, and the right side of his face, the part not pressed against the floor, looked caved in. She felt her stomach turn.

No. It never got easier.

She moved the few feet between she and Goren, and crouched beside him, taking a pair of gloves from her pocket and pulling them on. Her partner, engrossed in his examination, didn't look up, but he pointed out the blue nylon cord that bound the victims hands behind his back. Eames saw that his ankles were likewise bound.

"The ME puts the time of death between six and eight this morning," Goren told her, this time indicating the crushing damage to the man's face. "Broken zygomatic arch…probably not a fatal blow, but maybe knocked him out long enough to tie him up?" He paused, and Eames realized how well she could sense the subtle differences between the man Bobby had been, and the one before her now. His tone was dull, disinterested, flat. There was no more of his enthusiastic curiosity. The passionate pursuit of evil was now just another obligation.

From his crouching position, Goren leaned closer to the man's face, and she saw the sudden furrow in his brow. He pressed a gloved finger between Moore's closed lips. Drawing it back, he held it out toward his partner, eyes trained on the tip. She looked closely, seeing several ambiguous brown-black specks. Before she could ask what he thought it was, he said:

"Help me turn him over."

As they did so, she noticed that Goren held his hand against Moore's lower jaw, keeping it closed through the rolling motion. When the body settled, vacant eyes trained on the ceiling, her partner gently pried his mouth open. With two fingers, he reached past the teeth and extracted something. He held it up to his nose, and a contemplative second later, his eyes flicked to Eames.

"It's dirt," he said.

"_Dirt_?" Eames echoed, squinting into the man's open mouth. It was filled with it, covering his tongue.

"Post mortem," she observed, thinking the unfortunate man would have spit the substance out, or swallowed it if he had been alive. She saw Goren nod and wave to one of the CSU techs. As he instructed the woman to take a sample of the dirt, Eames' eyes roved along the rest of Moore's shirtless torso.

There were numerous lacerations, some superficial, others deep. She pointed to one on his lower left chest, above his heart. Congealed blood was smeared thickly around it, and on the floor where he'd lain. She'd seen enough stab wounds in her time to recognize a fatal one. Goren saw it, and his eyes scanned the floor around the body, Eames assumed searching for the weapon that had done it..

A voice from behind interrupted them. "The binding is new."

They turned as one. An older man, tall, thin, close cropped gray hair and a drooping, nineteenth century mustache, sidled up to them and glanced at the body before fixing them both with an intense, blue gaze.

"Frank Crawford," he said, proffering a hand to Goren, and then past him to Eames. "Two-three Homicide. I worked a case a lot like this a little over a year back out of the two-seven in north Harlem."

Goren opened the leather binder again, barely catching the pen that almost rolled out and dropped to the floor. "You said the binding is new," he said, and at the other man's curt nod, he added "But…the dirt isn't?"

Crawford looked surprised, and glanced down at the body. "Dirt?"

"This guy's mouth is filled with dirt," Eames told him.

The other detective seemed paler, glancing again at the body before he looked back to Eames and Goren. "Carl didn't have dirt in his mouth, no. But…" He paused. "You need to see this."

That said, he motioned them to follow, and moved away toward the doorway of another room. Eames looked inquisitively at her partner, who shook his head and shrugged thinly before he trailed after Crawford.

Crawford led them to a bedroom, small, and crowded with overlarge furniture and a haphazard array of childish clutter. A cheap metal desk, scattered with baseball cards and empty soda cans, shoved under a window. There was another table, with a small television, and an ancient VCR stacked with unlabeled tapes. It faced the bed, where the boy was.

The three of them stared at the body, and for a brief moment Eames wished that she possessed Goren's recent impassivity. Damien Moore's eyes were closed, as though he had still been asleep when his throat had been cut. The pillow and the pale blue sheets were soaked through with dark blood that in some places still glistened with moisture.

More glaring even then the lifeless child were the words scrawled on the wall three feet above the headboard. Their meaning was foreign to her, but their medium clear. They were written in blood, dried to a dull, rust-like brown against the patterned wall paper.

Horto vitium relinques , et in vestigia tuua solum ipsum cremat.

"Latin," he said beside her, and she heard the beginning of morbid interest in his voice.

"Don't tell me you can read it," she said, and wouldn't have been surprised if he did know what it meant. Her partner was possessed of an unpredictable sort of genius.

There was an interjection of silence in which she glanced at him, seeing his lips move, sounding the words out to himself. After a moment, he shook his head. "_Horto_…" he read, waving his hand toward the word. "Horticulture, in English. Maybe it's something to do with gardening?"

Eames raised an eyebrow. "He did put dirt in the victim's mouth."

Goren nodded. "_Cremat…_cremation? Burning? _Solum_ means alone, I think." He looked at Crawford. "This is new, too?"

Crawford nodded, and the three of them continued to stare at the words for a moment. Then the older detective indicated the body with one hand.

"This is the same way we found Devon Eldridge," he said, his voice bleak, and full of memory. The kids were always the hardest to deal with.

"You mean, early morning, still in bed?" Goren asked, still looking at the body. Crawford nodded, and Goren glanced at Eames. "The killer didn't want the boy to suffer," he mused aloud. Eames raised an eyebrow and shook her head. Cutting a twelve year old's throat was a strange way to show mercy.

"The last time," Crawford was saying, "the father wasn't tied up like Jhosa is. Carl went quick, single thrust to the heart."

Goren turned away from the gruesome scene and moved beyond the doorway. Eames gladly followed him, hearing him say:

"So…the killer didn't want the boy to suffer, but he wanted the father to. This time." He spun on his heel, facing Crawford, who paused in the doorway. "We were told there was a little girl. That she was here?"

Crawford nodded, looking even more grim. He motioned again for them to follow him, and he moved across the living area into another tiny room, scattered with toys.

"This is why I called in major case," Crawford said, pointing to something on at the foot of the bed.

It was a single rose, white, the petals still closed.

Eames felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

"You found one like it in Carl Eldridge's apartment?" she asked, but she already knew the answer.

Crawford nodded, and was about to say something else, but Goren interrupted him.  
"The Eldridges have a daughter?"

"No," Crawford said. "Devon was their only child. We found the flower on _their_ bed. We always assumed that Carl left it there…some sort of macabre message to his wife."

"She wasn't there." There was no question in Goren's words then. He looked at Eames, but his eyes held that distant expression that they took on whenever he was thinking outside his own perspective. Seeking the perspective of a killer. He glanced suddenly again at the flower.

"It was exactly the same?" he asked. "A white rose, unopened?"

"Yea," Crawford said, grim.

Eames stepped around her partner and out of the cramped space. The two men followed.

"Any of the neighbors see or hear anything?" she asked Crawford.

The detective pulled out a notepad, creased from being kept in his back pocket. "Actually," he said, "the lady that lives over in 4-D was coming up from the basement laundry and said she saw a woman she didn't recognize from the building. Passed her coming down the stairs- said she looked like she was in a hurry. Five-six, five-seven… blonde hair, brown eyes."

Goren, writing down what Crawford said, paused and looked at the other detective. He said nothing, but glancing at Eames, she knew they were thinking the same thing. The description fit Nicole Wallace perfectly, and although this particular crime didn't have her feel to it, there was very little Eames would put past the serial killer. Not even killing children.

Her partner tucked the leather binder under his arm then, and extended his hand to Crawford. "We'll be in touch with you," he told him. "We'll need everything you have about the Eldridge case."

Crawford nodded. "I'll run it up to you myself," he said.

-

-

They found Sarah Moore and her three year old daughter Sam in the super's office on the first floor. The woman, her eyes dry and empty, sat on a shabby orange couch, an unopened bottle of water in one hand and her daughter's head in her lap. Only the girl looked up when they entered, thumb pressed between her lips. Eames smiled at her as she sat, on the opposite end of the couch, but there was no reciprocal expression from the child. She wondered then how much the little girl had seen before she'd been removed from the upstairs apartment.

"We're very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Moore," Goren said gently. "But there are some questions we need to ask you about this morning." He unfolded a metal chair and seated himself across from the stricken woman, who looked at him for the first time. Eames heard the plastic of the water bottle she held creak as her fingers tightened around it.

"I wasn't here," she said, and Eames heard the fear in her voice. Fear that she had only narrowly skirted a like fate.

"You were just coming home from work?" Eames asked her, remembering what the captain had said. "Where is that?"

The other woman looked at her then, eyes wide and haunted. Eames saw the brownish-green discoloration beneath one that she'd tried to disguise with makeup. "I'm a nurse," she said. "I work thirds at the county hospital."

"Your husband hit you?"

Mrs. Moore touched her fingers quickly to the ridge of her cheekbone, and she pulled them away almost as fast. She said nothing. Eames threw a meaningful glance at her partner.

"Your son," Goren said, and Eames saw tears gather in Mrs. Moore's eyes before she looked at the other detective. "Was he in any kind of trouble, recently?"

At first, she didn't speak, and only stared at Goren as if the question confused her. Then, looking at the floor, she nodded slowly.

"He gets in fights at school, and he stays out half the night with those friends of his. They're all older than him. Smoking dope, standing on the street corner when they oughta be in class..." she trailed off. Her hand moved to cover her mouth as she seemed to notice that she'd been speaking of her son's behavior in the present tense.

Eames let the silence extend for a moment, her partner writing once more. She looked at the little girl, who was staring intently at her with large, dark eyes.

"Your daughter was in her room when you came home?" Eames asked then.

Mrs. Moore looked sharply at her daughter, an unsteady hand stroking the little girl's curling black hair away from her face.

"She was still asleep. The rose was…oh _god_ that man was_in_ her room!" She looked wildly at Eames.

Before she could find the words to comfort the woman, if she even possessed the ability, her partner stood and moved toward the door.

"We'll make sure someone from Victim's Services gets in touch with you," he said, and Eames stood as well, knowing that Goren saw what she did. That this woman wasn't a killer.

But it was part of her job to walk away from the hurt, and the sadness. She had to.

Or she'd never sleep.

Like he didn't

They were about to leave her behind, there on the faded orange couch, when Goren turned back to her abruptly.

"A woman," he said. "Five-seven or so, blonde hair, brown eyes…does that sound like anyone you know?" Eames heard the anticipation in his tone. She knew him that well.

Sarah Moore blinked, as though the question made no sense to her. Both eyebrows lifted, and she nodded briefly, shrugging.

"Juliana? Why?"

"Juliana." Goren repeated the name.

Mrs. Moore nodded again, plainly not understanding why the detective was asking. "She's a…social worker. ACS. But…what? Did someone see her here? She wasn't supposed to be here until Thursday."

Goren glanced at Eames, then back to the other woman.

"Um…thank you, Sarah. Someone will be in touch with you, ok? And uh… we'll need to talk to you again."

She could only stare at them. As they walked away, and shut the door between them. In her face was confusion, despair, shock, fear.

It was all familiar, but it shouldn't have been.

Justice was but a part of human absolution.

And none of it ever got any easier.

-

Sunday Dec 27th, 2007 – 8:24 P.M.

Detectives Goren and Eames

1 Police Plaza – Major Case Squad

-

Eames yawned, and taking one look at the cold, milky brown coffee that she had been about to drink, she set the oversized mug aside and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. She shouldn't have been this tired; it wasn't even nine o'clock yet, and she was used to working cases with her partner until well past midnight. But she hadn't slept well the last several nights, and unlike her partner, who seemed accustomed to long periods of insomnia, Eames needed her eight hours.

She glanced at Goren, who looked no more tired than he ever looked these past few months, which was probably telling in itself. His chin rested in his hand, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. He was looking at the file on the Eldridge murder that Crawford had, true his word, run up to them the hour before, but Eames couldn't tell if he was actually reading anything. He was much more prone to these long periods of vacant silence, which in the past were almost always productive, but just as often now seemed little more than his inability to focus.

"Ok," she said, "so far we have what?" She picked up a pencil and pulled a legal pad over onto the stacks of papers she'd been going through. Her partner didn't answer her immediately, and so she added: "The vics are both males, father and son."

Goren looked at her then, moving to prop both elbows on the table, his tall frame slumped over the Eldridge file. "Both of the boys were around the same age." he said, "Devon Eldridge was thirteen, and Damien Moore was twelve. But they both have juvenile records a page long." He picked up a sheaf of papers and flipped to one. "Breaking and entering, petty theft, possession of stolen property, assault. Carl Eldridge isn't much better."

Eames made notations next to Devon's name on her notepad and then pulled out the manila folder containing the information from the background checks they'd run on the Moores. She found the page she sought, and glanced over it. "Damien's been in and out of Spoffordfor the last two years, Jhosa did eleven twenty-nine at Riker's back in 2005 for possession." She looked at Goren, who was already shaking his head, having perceived her direction.

"Devon was never at Spofford… and Carl's beefs are all for domestic violence, but he never served any time for it." He paused, flipped through a few more pages. Then he looked up at her. "I don't think the connection is with the parents," he said.

Eames raised an eyebrow. "The boys then? There's nothing in their files that show they were ever within a thirty block radius of one another."

He frowned. "How long until we get that translation back?"

"Should be later tonight or tomorrow. No one in linguistics reads Latin, so Vasquez took it over to a professor at NYU." Eames shrugged. "And I talked to ACS while you were downstairs in forensics."

"The social worker?"

"Yea. Juliana Everett. They said they'd have her stop by in the morning."

Goren leaned back in his chair, looked as though he was about to say something else, when his eyebrows suddenly came together. He sat forward again and rifled through another stack of pages. He stopped at one, scanning it while Eames looked on, wondering what she'd said that had triggered his insight.

"It's her," he said. "She's the connection."

"The social worker?" Eames knew her tone was incredulous.

Goren shook his head, but the gesture was one of perplexity rather than negation. He glanced at Eames and held the page aloft, reading it.

"…spoke with ACS employee Juliana Everett concerning her last visit to the residence of Carl and Devon Eldridge May 26th 2006. Said she originally contacted the family when she followed up a report that Devon Eldridge had shown up for school with bruising and difficulty breathing. She said the family denied the abuse, but she felt confident that Carl Eldridge was the cause of Devon's injuries." Goren paused here and looked at Eames again. He finished what he'd been reading without looking down. "Everett was seen arguing with Carl Eldridge in the hallway outside his apartment the night before the death, but no conclusive evidence of homicide."

There had been a time when she would have scoffed at the idea of a female serial killer, but that had been before being the captive of just such a person. The memory made her shiver, and she set her pencil down. Goren, always perceptive, seemed to realize what she was thinking, because his expression was suddenly sympathetic.

"Go home, Alex," he said. "I'll stay here and pull what I can about this woman…go through all this again…wait on that translation. You go get some sleep."

She looked at him in appalled wonder. "Bobby, you've been getting much less sleep than me. You're pushing twelve hours today already. You need to go home too."

"I…don't…need to go home," he said, looking at his desk, his tone peculiar. Eames suddenly remembered the bandage he wore on his hand, and wondered again what had happened in his apartment that morning while she'd waited for him.

"Bobby…" she began again, but he looked at her sharply, and the look in his eyes was one of frustration and pleading. She held her hands up in a gesture of defeat. "Ok, ok," she said. "I'm going." She straightened the array of papers and files on her desk and shrugged into her jacket. She picked up her purse, and picked up the coffee cup to wash out before she left.

"Promise me you'll get some rest tonight, Bobby. And eat something?" She knew she sounded like a worried mother, but she couldn't help herself.

He waved a dismissive hand. "I'll be fine," he said. "Go."

Eames sighed and left him there, hating the thought that perhaps it _was_ better that he stayed at work, where even late at night on a Sunday, he wouldn't be by himself in the squad room. She might be able to fall asleep more easily than had she been thinking of him alone in his apartment, balanced as he was on the edge of things.

She glanced over her shoulder once before she stepped onto the elevator.

He sat at their desk, his forehead resting in his hands.


	2. Germination

Chapter 2: Germination

-

Monday, December 28th, 8:08 A.M.

Alex Eames

-

She _had_ slept a little better the night before, except that she'd dreamed about Jo Gauge. Or rather, she'd dreamed about Bobby, and him talking about the elements of the crime that fit Jo's M.O. The torture. For some reason, the rose fit into the place of the Pierre Loritz. The incongruity of it all had woken her up around five that morning, and she'd immediately thought about calling him, to make sure he'd gone home, but the thought that he might actually have been asleep stopped her.

Now, stalled in the maddening rush hour traffic, her patience deserted her. She should expect to find him at their desk when she got there. In the six years they'd worked together, he'd almost always arrived earlier than she, being a light sleeper and not living outside the city as she did. Even in the recent months, that hadn't changed. But after his vanishing act over the weekend, his presence...his continuity... seemed tenuous- a vapor ready to be scattered on the next wind.

She slammed on her breaks when the car in front of her stopped suddenly, red taillights distorted in the rain that streamed down her windshield. She wisely removed her coffee to the dashboard cup holder, and found her cell phone on the seat beside her. Glancing at the clock, she decided it was a surely reasonable hour for him to be awake, and she pressed his number on her speed dial.

Her stomach turned when it went straight to his voicemail. She had an unpleasant flashback to the weekend just past, only after seeing him yesterday the anxiety that accompanied it was much more potent.

She thought of the blood on his hand.

"_Damn _it, Bobby," she hissed to herself, throwing the phone back into the seat. She gripped the steering-wheel tightly, straining to see over the cars in front of her. In this traffic, she was either half a mile or thirty minutes from the nearest exit that could take her to his apartment. For a brief moment she thought about weaving out of the traffic and taking the emergency lane, but before she took her foot off the breaks she took a deep breath and told herself she was overreacting.

Maybe he was already there. He usually was at this time of day. Maybe this time he hadn't turned his cell off intentionally.

She picked up her phone again and dialed their extension at Major Case. It rang three times, and then someone picked up. It wasn't at all who she'd expected.

"Ross."

Eames' heart stopped in her chest. _What was Ross doing answering their line_? _What had happened to her partner?_ It was a moment before she could summon her powers of speech.

"Captain?" She heard the weak sound of her own voice. Someone behind her laid on their horn and she realized the traffic in front of her had moved ahead. She stepped on the accelerator more forcefully than she meant to.

"Eames. Good." Ross said. "You on your way in?"

"Yea. About twenty minutes away. What's wrong?"

There was a pause. "That's something we're going to have to talk about when you get here. Your partner was here all night last night. I made him go upstairs around six this morning and catch a couple hours' sleep in the crib. You can wake him up when you get here. After we have a few words."

"Ok.. I'm going to…" she began, but Ross had already clicked off. She sighed and tossed her phone aside once more, then she changed lanes and took the exit ramp toward Queens, and Bobby's apartment.

-

She'd been about to tell the captain that she was going to stop by her partner's apartment on her way in, to grab him a change of clothes and a shaving kit. Now, as she walked up the stairs to 2-B, she questioned if that was the sole reason she'd wanted to stop here. She really did feel that it would be in his best interest to look as put-together as possible around Ross, who she knew was on his way to thinking that her partner was a liability.

She wondered as she found the key he'd given her for emergencies and slipped it into the lock... that perhaps what she was looking for was insight. Evidence of the level of his despair... a tangible element of his inner chaos? Some physical clue as to how she could help him?

She didn't know what she expected to find as she pushed the door open, and she had to remind herself that she'd just spoken to the captain and confirmed that Bobby wasn't here.

The inside of his apartment was cold, as if he hadn't had the heat on in days. She swiped a hand across a light switch as she closed the door behind her. A lamp across the room came on, the muted glow that it put forth clearly intended only to illuminate the corner with what was likely the only piece of expensive furniture he owned: a brown leather reclining chair. Two books lay open, one on top of the other across the arm, and Eames could easily imagine him there, reading late into the night. She smiled for a brief second, but it faded as her eyes swept along the two bookshelves adjacent to one another on the far wall. The treadmill that had always stood across from the chair was folded in and pushed against the wall, unplugged. She'd thought perhaps he'd been burning off steam by working out at home, like he'd done habitually in the early days of their partnership. If not, then that said to her that his significant weight loss over the last few months must have been from not eating.

The thought led her gaze over the dark granite countertop of the island that separated the living area from the kitchen. A glint of the grey early morning light on glass caught her eye, and she circled the island and looked into the sink. It was bottle, standing upended in the drain, and she turned it carefully about and tilted it toward her so that she could read the label. 1792 Ridgemont Reserve. She righted it, twisting it back like she'd found it, and frowned. Had he poured it out, or was his habit to finish it? The thought of Bobby drinking in the frame of mind he was in lately scared her perhaps more than anything else.

She pocketed the keys that she still held in one hand and left that thought behind in the kitchen.

The door to his bedroom was open. The dark blue and green striped comforter was pulled up neatly over the king-sized bed, the pillows arranged with a particular eye for symmetry that appeared everywhere in his apartment. She remembered the afghan crumpled in the chair in the other room, and wondered how long it had been since he'd slept here. The entire room was curiously devoid, unlived in.

She rounded the bed and opened the wardrobe, a massive, subtly carved antique- if anything, he had sophisticated taste when it came to furniture- and found what she was looking for hanging on a hook on the left-hand door: a dark blue garment bag. She had to reach above her head to pull the zipper down.

She glanced inside. The black suit hung neatly inside the thin plastic from the dry cleaner whose partially crumpled yellow ticked still clung to the hanger. She scanned the shirts hanging neatly inside, and took down a white one, not caring to spend the time coordinating color with his ties. She pulled the dry cleaning ticket off the hanger and was in the process of maneuvering the shirt into the bag when something struck her. A memory. She looked at the crumpled ticket in her hand. It was dated almost exactly two months ago. She pushed the plastic up, to get a better look at the suit. She recognized the almost imperceptible stripe pattern…black against black…and remembered how she's noticed it standing behind him at his mother's funeral.

Appalled, she shoved the dry cleaning receipt into her pocket, tossed the shirt on the bed, and pulled the suit out, hanging it neatly with his others. She exchanged it for a charcoal grey one, put the shirt into the bag with it, and, checking her watch, realized she needed to hurry. She found his collection of ties, picked one out, and added the other articles of clothing he would need. Then, taking the bag down and laying it on the bed, she made for the bathroom to collect what he'd need to shave.

The door was closed, and she pushed it open, intending to hurriedly grab a couple of things, but what she saw stopped her cold, her hand frozen on the doorknob and her jaw parted in shock.

She knew now what had happened to his hand.

What would have been her reflection in the mirror above the sink was broken and divided in places by gaping holes where parts of the shattered glass had fallen out. She could see where the spider web of cracks was finer, closer together, radiating out around that place where his fist had struck it.

She looked down into the sink, and touched her hand to her lips in horror. Shards of the mirror glittered there beneath the faint light from the high window above. Underneath the glass was a straight razor, the kind she knew he used to shave.

She sank down on the side of the bathtub.

All of it…the glass, the sink, the blade of the razor…was stained in places by his now dried blood. It had trailed down the white porcelain into the drain, and was smudged across the edge of the basin. She glanced down and saw several drops on the floor, and the waste basket where he'd thrown the toilet paper he'd used to stop the bleeding. The wrapping of the bandage he'd put on.

Had he _been_ shaving with that razor? Or had he just been holding it, looking at himself in the mirror? What thoughts had been going through his head when he smashed it?

She sucked in a breath and stood quickly. He either had something in his squad locker he could use to shave, or he could go without.

She couldn't be there.

She couldn't be that close to the edge of her partner's dark cliff a moment longer and face Ross, or him, without tears. They threatened her vision even then, as she slammed the door on that place…on the maddening dark distance between them that she couldn't reach across.

She quickly gathered what she'd come for, a gesture she'd meant to be helpful that now seemed so utterly insignificant, so feeble.

She closed the front door behind her, hurried down the stairs, and found that she couldn't shake the feeling that she had intruded here. Had stepped in on a secret.

Something that was only a secret because no one had taken the time to look closely enough.

-

Monday, December 28th, 9:12 A.M.

One Police Plaza

-

Stepping into the elevator, the garment bag draped heavily over her arm, Eames thought about bypassing the captain and going straight to the crib to wake her partner up. Two things discouraged her. Foremost, she wanted Bobby to get every minute of sleep he could, and secondly, now was not a good time to inflame Ross. She punched the button for the eleventh floor and she thought about what she was going to say to him.

She knew what was coming. The captain wanted her away from her partner where he could ask her…try to get her to say...that her partner was indeed a liability. A disaster waiting to happen. In some form or another Ross had tried to get her to turn on Bobby since the moment he'd replaced Deakins. She wondered if it was truly because the captain was threatened by Goren's intellect. They, as a team, had the best arrest record in the squad, and it was no secret that Goren's unorthodox manner and keen empathy was the most effective tool Ross had at his command. It left her with a bitter taste in her mouth to see how the captain felt no qualms against using her partner's skill, but questioned the very source of his talent behind his back. It bothered her even more now, that she knew how fragile Bobby was.

She stepped out of the elevator and scanned the room for Ross as she made her way to their desk. She didn't see him at first, and so she took the moment to drape the bag over her chair and shrug out of her coat. She carried it and her purse to her locker, and stopped by the coffee pot. Cops made better coffee than any of the dime-a-dozen chains that littered New York City. This was coffee for people that didn't sleep. For the real caffeine junkies.

She mixed in a copious amount of sugar, as was her habit, and stirred it as she made her way back to the desk. She noticed that Bobby had straightened everything from the night before.

Something struck her then, in the wake of her visit to his apartment, and again she felt unshed tears briefly sting her eyes.

On her side of their desk, she had two photos in big silver frames, both of her nephew, another of her sister and her husband, and an old one of her parents. She had a drawing her nephew had done…an orange tyrannosaurus rex suspended in space… taped to the outside of the file drawer that made up one side of the desk. There was the dramatically oversized coffee cup shaped like a pumpkin that her sister had given her, which, now seasonally outmoded, served to hold an array of pens and pencils.

On his side, was his leather binder, closed, and resting alone in front of his empty chair. His laptop was opposite hers, turned off. There was a stapler. One of the stacks of files that they'd been going through, corners neatly aligned. A book, which, as she reached the desk and slid into her chair, she saw was a Latin dictionary. A single piece of paper was folded between the pages.

She sat holding the coffee cup in both hands, and stared at his desk. How had she sat across from him every morning for the past six years and not seen how alone he was? It wasn't that she was selfish, or immersed in her own world. God knew, there wasn't a lot to her life outside of her job. She rarely dated. She spent time with her nephew…

She sighed and set the coffee cup down without drinking from it.

_Her nephew._ _Her sister. Her mother_.

She had family, a support group, people she could count on to be there no matter what. What did he have? A departed mother who had been little comfort to him alive, a dead father who had abandoned him as a child, a brother who hadn't even bothered to show up for their mother's funeral, but whom his mother's will had left little doubt that she still favored over the spiteful son that had locked her in an institution. An empty apartment.

She spent a moment in silence, wondering how he saw her efforts to get him to come to her mother's house to spend Christmas with her. Did he see it as pity? An act of sympathy? Were they, with all these years between them, still so disconnected that he thought she didn't simply care about him and enjoy his presence? Was the fault in her?

Sighing, she reached across the table for the Latin book, but just as her fingers brushed it, she saw Ross emerge from the elevator and she froze. Beside him was a woman, five seven or so. Blonde hair hung in long waves to her chest. Even from this distance, Eames could see her eyes were dark. Ross' head was turned slightly toward her, saying something that was too far away to overhear as he guided her to Interview One.

It was _not_ Nicole Wallace.

Eames found herself letting out a breath of relief. If she'd had to face Nicole that day she might have been turning over her badge.

Ross motioned the woman into the glass-faced room, and Eames saw her sit down as the captain closed the door. While he crossed the room, Eames watched her. She sat for a moment clutching a shoulder bag that she'd lain across the table in front of her. She glanced around the room. Looked at her watch.

Eames would have liked to have observed her behavior longer, but Ross slid into the chair across from her and directed her attention with steepled fingers and raised eyebrows.

She covered her lack of desire to initiate a conversation by taking a long drink of coffee. She tried to pay special attention to the neutral affect of her facial expression, but it wasn't easy.

"Do I need to be worried about your partner, Eames?" Ross asked at last.

The particular wording of the question threw her for a moment. At first, she wanted to look Ross right in the eye and say "_yes, I really think you do because I know I am,"_ but logic and intuition told her that was not at all the answer Ross needed to hear.

"I don't think so, captain," she lied quickly before her guilt and doubt could lengthen the silence into something suspicious. "I told you earlier, he's just not sleeping well since all this with his mother."

Ross regarded her with his cold green eyes for a moment before he responded. "If dealing with his mother's death is too much for him, maybe he needs to take some time off."

"I don't think he does," she said, thinking about the sink in his bathroom.

"What happened to his hand?" Ross asked then, as though he'd read her mind.

"He told me the same thing he told you." She added a contrived but fond smirk. "He's always done the best he can keeping his personal life outside the job. As good a job of it as any of us can be expected to do."

Ross folded his hands in front of him along the table, examined the fingernails of one. She could tell that he at least perceived enough about how she regarded her partner that he called upon the wherewithal to appear slightly uncomfortable.

"Anything else like this," he said, and she knew he meant the unacknowledged but obvious nature of the injury to his hand, "and I'm going to recommend that he undergo a psych evaluation."

He didn't bother to suggest it would be for his own good, and it pissed her off.

"Cut him some slack, Captain," she snapped. "He's the best detective you've got, and you know it. If you knew what it took to do what he does after what he's had to deal with…" …_all his life _she almost added, but trailed off, too angry to continue. She sucked in an angry breath and took an enforced sip of her coffee. She sat the cup down more heavily than she intended, and turned her face toward the wall, unable to look at him.

Ross, although he was a captain now, was still a cop, and he seemed to recognize that he'd crossed a line with her as far as her partner was concerned.

"All right, Alex," he said softly, his tone conciliatory. He seemed about to say something else about it, but instead took a deep breath and leaned back in Goren's chair. He glanced over his left shoulder at Interview One, and Eames followed his gaze. The woman's face was hidden by her long hair as she bent over the table, now strewn with papers and files, busily writing.

"Juliana Everett," Ross said unnecessarily. Eames felt him look at her. "I glanced over some of what Goren was working on last night, but I didn't catch why she's here. Said you left a message for her to make an appearance."

Eames looked away, back to the captain.

"She a social worker. She has a connection to both cases…we're looking into it."

Ross raised an eyebrow. "You like her for this?"

Eames shrugged, wondering what Goren had found out the night before. She hated talking to Ross about their cases without him.

"It's too early to say," she said. "I need to talk to my partner."

Ross waved both hands and stood up. "Go. Get on it, and keep me in the loop, ok?"

Eames sighed, stood as the captain moved away toward his office, leaving her with his ever-so-familiar adage. She draped the garment bag over her arm once more, cast a last glance at the social worker waiting behind the glass, and headed for the elevator and her partner.

-

She tapped on the door softly, but hadn't expected the response she didn't receive. Pushing it cautiously inward, she let the light from the hallway serve for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside.

Her partner was stretched on a cot to the right of the door, on his back, with an arm draped over his eyes and one foot still planted on the floor. As though he'd simply lain back in exhaustion and hadn't intended to fall asleep.

Not wanting to turn the light on and blind him, she closed the door halfway and reached out to grasp the tip of his shoe. Pressing her fingers into it, she spoke his name.

His arm slid away from his eyes, his hand pausing to shade them from what light seeped into the room through the open door. After a moment, he propped himself up on his elbows and blinked, brow furrowed, in her direction. Then he quickly looked at his watch.

"Jesus," he muttered, and sat up, swinging his other leg to the floor. He rubbed his face with his hands and pushed them through his tousled grey-black hair.

"Light," she said by way of warning a moment before she flipped the switch.

He kept his hands pressed over his eyes for a moment longer before he looked at her. His gaze trailed to the garment bag she clutched to her and his head tilted to the side.

"Alex…" he said wearily. "You didn't have to do that."

She let the door shut behind her and laid the bag on the cot beside him. He looked at the floor as she crossed the smallish room and sat down on another cot. She had no idea what to say to him. About what she'd seen at his apartment. About her worry for him. About what Ross has said to her.

"Juliana Everett is downstairs," she told him instead.

He glanced up. There was an infinitesimal moment between them in which she saw gratitude for what he knew she omitted, and then he said:

"Not Nicole?" he asked, and she realized by the tired smirk that he knew better, but was making an attempt at humor. In a way it was heartening.

Eames went with it, and flashed him a relieved smile. "Nope," she said. "Except for the hair and the eyes she doesn't look anything like her."

Goren inhaled deeply, although she imagined the relief she sensed from him was due more to her willingness to remain silent about what she'd seen at his apartment.

"We should have her personnel file from ACS sometime this morning," he said. He sat back against the wall, drawing his long legs up. Wrapping his arms around them, clasping his fingers together, he looked at her.

"I found out what I could without that last night," he told her. "She's not in the system. Not even a parking ticket. I didn't think it would turn anything up, but I did a search over the net." He paused, raised an eyebrow. Eames did likewise, in question. "I found a picture of her," he continued. "On the website for UT Knoxville. With Dr. Bass."

"The forensics guy?" Eames asked, incredulous. Most everyone that had ever worked in law enforcement knew who Dr. William Bass was. He was the director of the most cutting edge forensic anthropology program in the United States, the mastermind behind the legendary "Body Farm," which boasted a significant number of the major advancements in determining time of death.

Goren nodded. "Yea. Turns out our social worker has a Ph.D. in Forensic Anthropology from UTK. One of Bass' protégés. Her thesis… _Racial Differences In Forensic Facial Reconstruction_… it's published on the college site. So is some of her work…" He paused as though he realized the information was not relevant. He looked at his knees and shook his head. "I don't know what she's doing as a social work in New York City," he said. Eames couldn't interpret his tone.

"So the point is," she interjected, "is that this girl knows forensics. That jives with the complete lack of forensic evidence we have, doesn't it?"

Goren shrugged. "It does and it doesn't." Eames waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. Before she could say anything else, he stood up and grabbed the bag off the cot beside him.

"Give me fifteen," he said on his way out the door.


	3. Germination Part II

Juliana heard the soft metallic click of the door opening, and she looked up, having completely lost track of time. Before the door had swung fully inward, she glanced at her watch. She'd been there for almost an hour.

Two people entered. The female, pretty, with hair like honey and eyes that were happy in other places, was overshadowed by the stature of the male behind her, whose presence irrevocably drew the eye.

No one had told her why she was here, but she saw something grave and sad in his expression, and she set her pen down on top of the report she'd been writing about her last visit to one of her many families. She realized as a result of the gesture that she must appear drastically irreverent, but she stopped herself short of frantically gathering her haphazardly strewn papers. She sat back in her chair, and felt her mind racing, imagining all possible reasons for her advised presence here as she looked at them.

Or, rather, as she looked at _him_. Something about him compelled it.

They both took chairs across from her in complete silence, and she felt her brow crease in consternation. The woman held a blank legal pad, and a pencil, and as she sat down she noted something, and Juliana restrained an innate curiosity that encouraged her to lean forward and read it.

"What happened?" she asked instead, looking from one of them to the other. These were people that dealt with tragedy. It was in every line of their faces.

The woman paused in her writing, glanced up with a partially raised eyebrow, then began writing again. The other detective glanced at his partner, then flashed Juliana a smile that only minimally extended to his eyes. He sat a leather binder on the table, flipped it open, and extended his hand to her. Tentatively, she took it. It made her feel small. Fragile.

"I'm Robert Goren," he said. "This is Detective Eames." He tilted his head toward his partner, and released her hand. She tucked it into her lap and stared at them, waiting.

"Uhm…thanks for coming by," Goren said, after a glance at his partner seemed to imply that the other woman was waiting for him to initiate whatever they had planned. "We just have a…few…quick questions for you."

At this, the other detective, Eames, looked up from her writing and smiled, falsely, at her. Juliana felt herself return a bemused expression.

"Ms. Everett," Eames said. "Where were you yesterday morning, between five and eight A.M.?"

Juliana opened her mouth to respond, but the answers disappeared in dawning realization.

"Between five and eight?" she repeated. "What happened?"

"Just answer the question, please?"

Juliana frowned. "I was in a number of places," she said. "My home. The subway. The streets of Harlem." She paused, and her next words carried her frustration at their circumspectness. "And outside the door of Jhosa and Sara Moore's apartment?" She let the lilt of a question invade the admission, hoping they would tell her why she was here.

The other detective leaned forward, and she glanced at him. His gaze was searching, and she could see the abiding, deep intelligence in his sad eyes. He let the contact last, holding her gaze without blinking. She could feel the other detective looking at them both. Then, quietly, but careful to avoid inflection, he said:

"Jhosa and Damien Moore are dead, Juliana."

She stared at him. She felt her head tilt slightly to the side, an unconscious gesture of questioning, as though he would simply laugh and admit he was only joking. Her eyes strayed from his face to the table, to the papers she'd been filling out. The report on her inability to contact Jhosa the morning before at his apartment.

"Why were you there?" It was him, asking.

Eyes still on the page before her, she resisted the urge to crumple it in her fist.

"Because," she snapped, more harshly than she intended. "Jhosa had a habit of leaving his children alone so he could go out. To enjoy the good life while his wife worked third shift to support he and his crack problem." She glanced up, from one detective to the other. "That pisses me off," she said, "So I show up unannounced sometimes, to check on the kids."

Goren looked immediately away from her to the table and pulled his leather binder toward him, long fingers curled tightly over the edge.

"You don't seem very…upset," the other woman said, and Juliana looked at her quickly. She felt a short laugh escape her lips and wished immediately that it hadn't. She pressed a hand over her eyes.

"Upset." It was his voice. She drew her hand away and looked at him. He met her eyes as though there was nothing else in the room. "How upset can you allow yourself to be? Right? You deal with senseless tragedy every day. Fathers that don't give a damn about their children. Children that become their fathers while you stand by and watch?"

There was something in his voice. Some remnant, some memory, that her own honed empathy had taught her to hear, and she yearned to pursue it. To ask him what it was about his own past that was bound into this.

But all she said was: "Some of them, yes. But that's why I do what I do."

His lips curled into something both like and utterly unlike a smile, and he shifted to the side, his chin in his hand. "You mean… why you're a social worker? Instead of a forensic anthropologist?"

She smiled without thinking, then realized that being flattered by his interest in her past was entirely misplaced in this situation. She pressed her hands on the table in front of her and stared at them. Something about the way he looked at her burned into parts of her she'd thought well hidden away. It was more than disconcerting. Did he unhinge everyone he spoke to like this?

She glanced up, controlling the furtive tendency he inspired. To allow herself a moment to collect her thoughts, she glanced briefly at his partner, whose expression she couldn't begin to read.

"Why do _you_ think I do this?" she asked suddenly, fixing him with her gaze. The slight part of his lips and his silence told her he hadn't expected that response.

"You're right," she went on. "I have a Ph.D. in Forensic Anthropology. But…there's no hope left when I get there. It's too late. What comfort is identity, really? You can bury your loved ones? What if I can do _one_ thing to keep people from ever getting to that point?" She stopped, and looked at the table. She remembered giving this same speech to her brother, who'd told her she was stupid to waste her education on what he called an altruistic vendetta.

There was a silence as both detectives stared at her. She wanted to look at him, but didn't dare. Finally, the woman spoke.

"What can you tell us about Carl and Devon Eldridge?"

She almost answered with a curt "_They're dead,"_ but a sudden, sharp realization froze the words in her throat. Her hand moved to her face, fingers hovering over her lips as her mind gathered similarities between the two families. The Moores, the Eldridges. Carl, with the knife in his heart. Devon with his throat cut.

Her eyes found the laminated badge clipped to the pocket of his suit. These were Major Case detectives.

"I see," she said softly. She slowly began to straighten the scattered papers, not bothering to put them back in order. She sensed the two detectives glance at each other. "Crawford and Reddick? What tipped them off this time?" She looked up at them both.

She saw Eames' lips part, her eyes widen slightly, taken off guard. Goren, however, didn't skip a beat.

"The only ones that would have recognized a pattern," he said quietly, and she couldn't tell if he was musing aloud, or if he was telling his partner how Juliana had made the connection.

Juliana nodded shortly.

Eames, her brow furrowed, pointed the tip of her pencil toward her and opened her mouth to say something, but her partner raised his hand slightly off the table, stopping her.

"You think they missed something with the Eldridge's?" he asked.

"Well…yes." She shifted in her chair, folded her arms on the table over her case notes. "Carl killing his son…that I could have believed. Slitting his throat would have still seemed a little… incongruous. But Carl Eldridge falling on his sword? No way."

"Falling on his sword..." Goren repeated her words, and she heard the slightest hint of amusement. "So the murder/suicide theory. You didn't buy it?"

She shook her head. "They came to my office to talk to me. I had been there, at the Eldridge's apartment the day before. Carl hated me. Him standing on the sidewalk in front of their apartment calling me a meddling bitch was a possible motive?" She shrugged, raising an eyebrow. "But why would I have killed Devon too? I think that's as far as they went with it."

"Wait," Eames said, shaking her head and putting her pencil down, leaning forward. "_Why_ is it, again, that you think Carl didn't kill himself?"

"Intuition. It's every bit as valuable a tool for a social worker as it is for a detective," she said. "Carl suffered from a heightened sense of self importance I always thought was somewhat pathological."

"A narcissist," Goren offered.

Juliana nodded. "Exactly. Everything had to revolve around him. He had no sense of personal responsibility." She leaned forward slightly, lifting her hand to emphasis the point she intended to make, the same one she'd tried to make with Crawford and Reddick a year ago. "If Carl had killed Devon…"

"…it would have been Devon's fault," Goren interrupted her, finishing the thought.

Juliana dropped her hand to the table and nodded. "So him committing suicide in a frenzy of guilt and shame makes sense for what reason? All one had to do to understand Carl was take a look at Valerie Eldridge. She was his polar opposite. She was convinced that everything he did to her was her fault. With her, he didn't have to apologize, didn't have to beg her to stay. He wasn't capable of feeling remorse for his actions."

"You're right," Goren waved his hand as if to dismiss the entire question. "It doesn't make sense." There was something in his tone that seemed like a mixture of confusion and irritation. Directed at the detectives that had worked the older case?

Juliana sighed and sat back in her chair.

"So," she said. "If I were a serial killer, what would my motive be?" She looked at the woman, and felt sickened by her expression. Her mouth drawn into a thin line, her eyebrow lifted slightly into a furrowed brow. Unconvinced. Her partner had drawn away from the table, arms crossed, with the knuckles of one hand pressed against his mouth. His intense stare was expectant.

She took a deep breath. "I'm frustrated and driven mad by the mostly unrewarding nature of my job. Something about the men reminds me of my past, and one night I snap, and kill them. Then, deciding the boys are too much of a chip off the old block, I kill them too. But the women are already victims, so I leave them alive. And what is the white rose? A symbol of innocence? For the two children young enough to have a chance to grow up untainted?"

Goren's eyes narrowed and he returned the weighted look that his partner cast him. Then he moved closer to the table, turned several pages in his binder, looking for something.

"The white rose," Eames repeated. "I don't think we said anything about that."

"No," Juliana said, "But Crawford and Reddick came to see me_one_ time, because of the…confrontation…I'd had with Carl. I told them Carl wouldn't have killed himself. I didn't have an alibi. But for some reason I didn't register as a suspect with either of them." She waved her hand to incorporate the room. "I was never asked to come in for…questioning. A week after they died, it was written off as a murder suicide. I imagine I'm little more than a vague notation in his report. There would have to be something else at the crime scene that triggered his memory. A similar M.O." she paused, shrugging. "A boy with his throat cut, and a dead man with a knife wound to the heart? It's not enough to call in Major Case, is it?" She paused, made herself draw a quiet breath to still the edge of desperation that she heard creeping into her voice. More calmly, she added: "There was only one thing at the Moore's apartment that day that would catch his attention again."

Eames simply stared at her for a moment, and glanced wide eyed at her partner. Juliana made herself look at him, feeling as though the expression on his face would somehow be auspicious. He was looking intently at her, both eyebrows raised, and she could see clear surprise in his round, dark eyes. To her own surprise, after several seconds of silence, his lips curved in a smile that this time was genuine, and he laughed softly. Shaking his head, he looked at his binder and waved one finger toward her.

"That's uh…very…astute. Very…perceptive."

She looked at the table, not knowing how to respond to that. She found it was difficult to judge whether his laughter was amused, or mocking. It sounded out of place coming from him, in any respect, as if he didn't laugh much.

"You said…two children." He commanded her attention once more.

"Yeah," Detective Eames chimed in. "Our reports don't mention anything about Carl and Valerie having any more children."

Juliana smiled sadly. "She was two months pregnant at the time."

Goren inhaled deeply, scribbling something in his notebook, nodding to himself.

At that moment, the door opened, and all three of them looked toward the sound. Another man, curling dark hair and green eyes, shoved his head through the opening and flicked a hand at Eames. The detective cast an inquisitive glance at her partner and joined the other man outside, the door closing behind them.

Goren glanced from the door to Juliana, but when he saw that she was watching him, he dropped his gaze back to his binder, and continued writing, as if he intended not to speak to her until his partner returned. She had the sudden feeling that of the two detectives, he was much more inclined to believe her, although she didn't know exactly why, and she felt a potent _need_ to convince him.

"You know I'm not a serial killer," she said, her voice a quiet interjection into the silence.

He didn't look up immediately, but he stopped writing and she saw his eyes shift. As if he was considering it. After a moment, he straightened slightly and met her gaze. He stared directly into her eyes, the two of them facing each other, unblinking, across the table. If she was lying to him, she had no doubt he would see it.

"Tell me why it isn't you," he said.

Was it curiosity, or a test? The line seemed very fine.

"Without being able to show you my soul?" she said, but didn't wait for a response. "I'm not driven to kill men because they remind me of my father, because _he_ wasn't my problem growing up. It doesn't fit to suggest that I am trapped in a futile job, and snapped out of frustration, since I have more than just my Ph.D. to fall back on. And anyway…your killer didn't "snap." Your killer is a meticulous planner." She paused, and pushed the stack of case files still on the table toward him in emphasis. "And I spend fifty hours a week _while_ going to school trying to help children _just_ like Damien, and Devon. I _believe_ that children do not have to grow up to be like their parents, because _I_didn't."

There was something in his eyes then that was raw, unguarded by the cautious detective's demeanor. She'd seen enough haunted expressions in her lifetime to know when memories stirred within.

He sat back, shook his head slightly as though to clear something. He focused on the notes he'd been writing, seeming to be in deep thought.

Juliana's eyes trailed to the open binder between them, searching for some clue, some insight. His fine penmanship was only slightly too far away to discern, but something else caught her eye. Something larger, a color photograph, clipped to the right top of the notebook. She craned her neck as though the gesture could upright the image, and before she could stop herself, she reached out and touched it, intending to pull it toward her.

Goren was faster. His right hand moved to cover it, catching both the photograph and the tips of her fingers beneath.

His touch became as much a part of her consciousness as what lay beneath their hands, and she froze. Her heartbeat quickened for that brief moment.

He slowly pulled the binder back, her fingers slipping from it. He looked from her to the photograph. Studying it for a long moment, he returned his gaze to hers. Then he pulled it free of its clip, turned it around, and pushed it across the table toward her.

It was Damien Moore's bedroom wall. There was the panoramic photograph of Damien's eighth grade Little League Team, to the right of that old seventies' television set with the aluminum foil-covered antennae.

Only now there were words.

They looked brown in the picture.

She felt her lips moving as she read them.

"It's Latin," he said.

She looked sharply up, both eyebrows raised. Only in the back of her mind did she notice that he said it as though he honestly believed she didn't know.

"Do you know what it says?" she asked him.

He looked back at the picture, brow furrowed. "Something…about a garden. Burning, alone. We haven't translated it yet."

She realized he'd missed the particular intonation of her question. Touching the photograph with the fingers of one hand, she turned it back to him.

"_Horto vitium relinques , et in vestigia tuua solum ipsum cremat_," she read aloud the words written across the wall, and she imagined, underneath that, was the body of a boy with his throat cut. "You leave behind a garden of vice, and the soil itself burns in your wake."

Eyes still on the picture, he sat back in his chair again. He looked up at her slowly, studying her intently for a long moment in silence. There was something in his expression that Juliana couldn't read, and she wondered immediately if advertising that she knew Latin had been an uninspired idea.

Just as he took a breath to speak, however, the door opened again, and Eames motioned to him. He glanced quickly back to Juliana, holding her eyes as he slid the photo back into his binder and closed it. He said nothing as he stood and walked toward his partner, but the look that he cast over his shoulder as the door shut between them was not suspicious, but mystified.

Alone once more in the barren, grey room, Juliana wrapped her arms around herself, and watched the detectives through the glass wall. She saw Eames hand Goren a piece of paper. He looked at it, reading something, and glanced briefly over his shoulder at her. He tucked it into his notebook, and the two partners stood there, his head bent toward hers in conversation. A few times, Eames looked past him to Juliana. At last, the female detective raised an eyebrow at her partner and shrugged, shaking her head.

Juliana looked quickly away when Goren turned around, but glanced up again at the sound of the door opening once more. The tall detective stepped partly into the room, holding the door open with his shoulder. He motioned toward the outer squad room with his head.

"You can go," he said softly.

-


	4. Germination Part III

-

He wanted to know what she was thinking at that exact moment. Her eyes…such a dark shade of brown that from that distance they appeared deepest black…were not the eyes of a woman that trusted people. He saw her lips part, draw a breath as though to speak, but she seemed to think better of it, and looked away from him to the table where the stack of papers sat before her…her work, that she'd brought with her. She reached over to pull it toward her, but she paused, her hand resting on it. Because he watched her with his entire consciousness, he saw the barely perceptible tremble in the graceful fingers. As if the two of them had noticed it at the same moment, she curled them briefly into her palm before she dragged the file toward her. She stood and returned her work to her shoulder bag at the same moment, but instead of moving immediately for the door, she turned her face for a moment toward the opposite wall. He saw her take a deep breath that shuddered through her, and his immediate, instinctive impulse was to touch her.

He squeezed the handle of the door tightly.

Finally, she slid the strap of her bag over her head and turned toward the door. She walked softly toward the freedom he'd offered, her eyes on the floor.There was the delicate scent of sandalwood as she passed him, her shoulder almost brushing his chest. At that moment, she glanced up and met his eyes, and before she looked away again, he saw there an achingly familiar sadness, limned with moisture.

Then she was beyond him, the distance lengthening across the squad room. His hand slipped from the door handle.

"Juliana," he called after her.

She stopped, and turned back to him, her expression questioning, but resigned.

"The…Eldridges. You kept their file."

She raised an eyebrow, nodded. "I can bring it to you," she said, but her voice was flat. For some reason, that bothered him.

He shook his head, meaning to be assuaging, which didn't fit the fact that she was the best suspect they had in two murders. "Uhm… no, that's ok," he said. "I'll uh… send someone by to pick it up, if that's ok."

She stared at him for a moment, then she shrugged and nodded. And then she was walking away from him again, her long grey skirt ghost-like around her.

He crossed his arms as he watched her go, sensing Eames edge close to him.

"So now what? Are you really buying her story?" he heard his partner ask.

He heard his response echo in his head. _I want to. _But no words formed. He felt Eames' watching him. The silence wore on.

He found himself wondering as he watched her walk away, what she went home to. What waited at the end of her day. An empty apartment? Silence? Too much time for reflection?

The restrained tears in her dark eyes, as she'd passed him. Grief?

_Or remorse?_

He turned his face slightly toward his partner, started to say something to her, but at that moment, from across the squad room, waiting for the elevator, she looked back.

Words, thoughts…suspended.

Then she stepped onto the elevator and she was gone.

"Bobby."

He looked quickly at Eames. In her elfin face was a mixture of confusion and worry…and doubt.

Seeing doubt there caused it to stir in his own being.

He looked at the floor. He thought about telling Eames that Juliana had translated the Latin in the photograph for him, just before she'd shown him the copy of the NYU professor's interpretation.

Something he could not define kept him from it.

"Do we have the…uh….personnel file from ACS yet?" he asked her instead.

Eames regarded him silently for a moment, the only person that ever looked at him and knew he wasn't being completely forthcoming, and then moved toward their desk, nodding.

"Vasquez brought that too," she said.

He followed her over. A deep admiration and respect for her careful manner was almost as potent as the guilt that surged inside him for his constant, obsessive need for distance. He knew he didn't fool her. But in her silence was faith, and trust, and it was solace.

They slid into chairs opposite one another, and she flipped open a manila folder and extracted several stapled pages. She briefly perused the contents, and handed them over.

The first page was Juliana's resume. Their conversation in the interview room replayed itself in his mind. "…_I have more than my Ph.D. to fall back on…"_

"Did you read this?" he asked, and he heard the unrestrained approbation in his own voice.

Eames looked up from another page she was studying. Goren read the section entitled "Education" out loud to her.

"1990 to 1994, University of California, Berkeley. Magna Cum Laude, Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, Bachelor of Science in Biology. Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology from The University of Tennessee Knoxville, and…her Master's in Social Work from Columbia."

"Jesus," Eames said. "This girl has been in school most of her life."

He raised an eyebrow. "Right. So…what she does… social work. It's a passion. Not a dead end." He scanned the "employment history" section of the resume, looking for jobs she'd held in New York City. "She worked for the Bronx County M.E. from…1997 until 2001. And the Metropolitan History Museum." He looked at his partner. "If she…" He meant to say, "_If she did this then it's something deep that drove her to it…some psychosis that has nothing to do with her job,_" but he found that, for some reason, he couldn't voice that. There was an instant moment of doubt in his chest. Directed at himself. Because he knew his instinct… his sense of responsibility… should have encouraged him to seek that. To see it. And he couldn't. Or. Worse. He just didn't want to.

He sat back and inhaled deeply. His eyes flickered to his partner and just as quickly away.

"She told me her problem growing up wasn't with her father," he told his partner, flattening the resume against the table and glancing at the several pages of the file that Eames still held.

If anything, his partner was shrewd, and she glimpsed his meaning. She glanced over several pages, turning them over face down to her left until she paused at one.

"Uh… well…this is self-reported family history." She read in silence for a moment, and he found himself leaning forward in an effort to see the page. "Part of the… "what incidents in my past could benefit my potential as a social worker" section." Eames continued. Her brow creased. "It says that her mother committed suicide when Juliana was seven. Says her father died of cancer and suffered from depression all his life. She's got two younger brothers…one of them is in and out of rehab."

He leaned against the table, propping himself on his elbows, and focused on the back of the white page Eames held before him. He felt her eyes on him, and he felt the curiosity that he inspired in her with his silences.

"Younger brothers," he repeated. "So her father remarried? I think we need to talk to her step-mother."

"The background check turn up a name?" Eames asked, and Goren flipped a few pages and responded with a nod.

"Medford, Oregon," he said. "I'd say she got as far away from home as possible." He stifled a sudden yawn and glanced at his watch. "It's only 8:30 there… I'll try to call her later this afternoon."

Eames nodded, and although she still held several pages of the ACS file aloft before her, her eyes were on him, intent.

"What?" he asked, wondering if her silent stare had something to do with what he'd just said.

His partner sighed, and set the pages aside. She glanced behind her at Ross' office, where the captain sat at his desk behind a closed door. When she turned back to him, Goren raised an eyebrow in question.

"Bobby," she said, her voice low, "maybe you should take the rest of the day off. Go home…clean up." The last two words were said with a slight emphasis, and Goren knew she wasn't suggesting he needed a shower. She meant the glass, and the blood.

He found he couldn't look at her, and focused instead on the table, straightening the various pages into neat stacks.

"I'll be fine, Alex," he told her, but wasn't sure if it was really the truth.

She didn't say anything for a moment, and he felt a curious mixture of anger that she had intruded into his private space, and…relief…as though a dark secret weighing on his chest had been exposed. If only her worry, or her sympathy, at seeing the evidence of his discontent were the slightest respite.

But it only made him feel worse.

"Ross wanted to talk to me this morning," she went on at last, and he looked up. "He asked me what happened to your hand."

Goren unconsciously curled the fingers of his still bandaged hand into his palm, as if to hide the angry red abrasions.

"What did you tell him?" he asked, finding that he was unsure how much the scene at his apartment had affected her. In many ways, she was better at hiding her emotions than he was.

Eames sighed, and took a deep breath. "I said you told me the same thing you told him, and I'm not sure if he thinks I really know or not. But he asked me if I thought he should be worried about you."

Worried, he thought to himself. Not about his personal well-being, but about how his state of mind might affect Ross. But of course, for what reason could he expect his boss to be concerned with Robert, the person? He was Detective Goren, and that was all. God, but didn't it seem like the boundary of his identity so many days?

"I told him no," Eames said into his silence. "But I'm not sure I believe that." She still didn't bring up the details of her visit to his apartment, and for that he was grateful. It seemed distant to him, as though it had happened to someone else and he had merely stood back and watched it.

"I'll be fine," he repeated.

"I hope so Bobby," she said softly. Then, after a brief pause during which he had to look away, she added "Ross says much more of this nature and he's going to recommend you for a psych evaluation. I don't…" She stopped, and he heard her rapidly shuffling papers.

What had she been about to say, he wondered, starting at the inflamed skin of his left hand. "_I don't think you'd pass a psych evaluation, Bobby."_ And she was probably right. Hell… he wasn't sure if he there had _ever_ been a stage in his life that a psychological examination would have revealed a well-adjusted, balanced character.

A sudden wave of exhaustion swept over him, and he pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes for a moment. He dropped his hands onto the stack of papers on his desk, gathered them into his binder. He stood, turned to leave, to flee this terribly uncomfortable conversation, but he made himself face her and speak calmly.

"I think…I _will _take the rest of the day off."


	5. Upheaval

Chapter 3: Upheaval

-

Tuesday, December 29th, 2007 10:32 A.M.

ACS Manhattan Branch

Juliana Everett

-

She was tired. It was the sort of deeply ingrained exhaustion that was only intensified by a nightmare-filled excuse for sleep the night before, her consciousness refusing to allow her to slip too far below the surface.

And yet it seemed that there was little difference being awake. She felt an old, familiar numbness as she walked through the hall toward her office. The people that passed on either side were all but transparent, a blur at the edge of her dampened senses.

She could feel the cumbersome weight of the files in her arms, page after page of problems she couldn't solve, and she wondered if she was moving toward some sort of precipice of sanity.

There was so much constant futility.

The day before replayed itself in her mind.

Two people looking for a killer. In her. It was an effort to stifle a burning anger, to tell herself that they were just doing their job: to doubt people. Not to trust. To look for lies. It was a lot like her job, and the more she did it, the more she thought it was simply the way one had to deal with humanity.

She was so tired that she didn't notice that her door was open, when it should have been locked like she'd left it the night before. Or that the lamp on her desk was on. She went into her office, which was little more than a glorified closet, and walked toward the window left of her desk, like she did every morning. Holding the files against chest with one arm, she twisted the blinds open onto the third day of dismal winter rain in a row.

She glanced unhappily at the sad state of the potted lavender on the windowsill and sighed, moodily jerking the blinds all the way up.

"I never had much luck with plants, myself."

The unexpected voice behind her startled her so badly that when she whirled toward it, she hit the corner of her desk with her leg hard enough that she almost knocked the lamp off. Trying to catch it, she dropped the files in her other arm and the carefully ordered papers scattered at her feet.

She resisted the urge to curse, and without looking at the detective, who'd been standing to the right of the door, beyond her peripheral vision, she knelt down to gather the pages. The shock of realizing he was there, waiting for her, and the overwrought state of her nerves brought irrational tears to her eyes, and she paused, pressing her fingers against her forehead to calm herself.

"I'm sorry," she heard him say, closer to her.

She had little choice but to wipe the moisture from her eyes before she glanced up. Kneeling across from her, Robert Goren met her eyes, an awkward but disarming smile on his lips. She felt the corner of her mouth twitch, but looked quickly away and began gathering the strewn papers.

wShe watched his hands as he helped her. His fingers were long and slender…the sort of hands Da'Vinci had drawn. For some reason she took notice of the fact that he wore no wedding band.

She picked up the last of the files and he stood with her. He held out those that he'd picked up for her, and she added them to hers, hopelessly disorganized.

"Good morning, Detective," she said, although she found herself unable to sound irritated.

"You can…call me Robert, and I didn't mean to uh.. startle you," he said, taking a step back from her. The smallish space of her office made her acutely aware of how tall he was.

Juliana dropped the files in a state of disarray on her desk. One more thing for her to do later. She removed her coat, edging around her desk.

"I wasn't expecting to see you again," she said, hanging it over the back of her chair, and let her eyes meet his pointedly. "Is there something else you needed to ask me?"

He returned her stare briefly in silence, and she could almost feel him dissecting the tone of her words. Then, to her surprise, one side of his mouth turned up in a grin that seemed amused, and he turned slightly away from her, pointing with his left hand, still wrapped in a bandage, at a group of photographs on her wall.

"I was looking at these," he said, glancing over his shoulder at her. He indicated the one in the middle, a rather unremarkable, engraved rock behind a velvet rope. "Is this…" he began, but paused.

"The Rosetta Stone," Juliana finished, and he glanced back at the photo, peering more closely at it. "It was the essential archaeological discovery that allowed…"

"…Egyptian hieroglyphs to be translated," he interrupted. "I've always wanted to see it. Where was this taken?"

Juliana felt her eyebrows lift fractionally. "The British Museum. A long time ago, before it was behind ten inches of glass."

He said nothing, continuing to glance over the pictures. She wondered if he was simply naturally curious, which seemed a likely quality for a detective, or if he was playing some sort of game to unnerve her.

"Paris, Rome, Florence…" he named several of the places in her photos, paused at one for a moment, and turned back to her. She saw genuine wonder in his eyes. "You've been to Pompeii?"

She nodded, and he turned back to the photo, studying it intently.

"What was it like?" he asked quietly.

She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling anxiety stir in her chest. "It was overwhelming," she said. "And a little bit creepy. Detective, why are you here?"

He turned away from the wall, his keen dark eyes studying her face, as though he could decipher there the nature of her unease, and she immediately regretted her sharp tone.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I haven't been sleeping much, and this thing…with Jhosa and Damien…" she faltered, wondering if she was making things worse. But his expression softened, and she thought she saw compassion in his eyes then. As though being stretched thin by too many overlong nights was something he related well to.

"We talked yesterday about the files you kept," he said, and it struck her immediately why he had come, and she felt stupid. Although she imagined anyone in her position, a suspect in a serial murder, would be marginally on edge.

"Right," she said quickly, "The Eldridges." Then she cast a dubious glance at the three adjacent filing cabinets lining the wall to her left and sighed. "You might as well have a seat," she told him, casting him a weak but apologetic smile.

He returned the smile, but refrained from settling into the solitary armchair in the corner behind him. Rather, he continued to move around her office, hands clasped behind his back, looking at the scores of framed photographs which were her only attempt at decoration.

Pulling out a potentially hopeful drawer in one cabinet, she spoke to him, meaning to counteract her prior apprehensiveness. "Have you traveled much, Detec…um… Robert?" It felt strange, to use his first name. As if, under certain circumstances, she would have been pleased by the familiarity it bespoke.

"I was stationed in Korea, China, Germany…" he replied, his voice muted. "…when I was in the Army." This last he said with a trace of bitterness, and she glanced over her shoulder at him, but he was facing the opposite wall.

She pushed that drawer closed and opened another one. "Those three pictures together in the black frame are rather on the morbid side, I think," she went on. "I really only went to that church to take a picture of Dante's tomb, but I snapped the ones of Galileo and Michelangelo since they were there. I took one of Machiavelli's too, but decided not to put it up."

"Because he was a bigot and an imperialist?" he asked.

Juliana's fingers paused between two folders for a moment before she continued to pick through them. "Actually that _is_ why. How'd you guess?"

He didn't respond to her question, but asked one of his own. "You said you went to this church specifically to see Dante's tomb. His poetry is primarily religious allegory." She understood the question in his statement, and deflected it.

"It's also about human fear, doubt, the search for self, courage, love. Not to mention, it's beautiful," she said, and on impulse, she recited one of her favorite lines from memory, filling the void as she moved to another file cabinet. "As one who unwills what he wills, will stay strong purposes with feeble second thoughts, until he spells all his first zeal away…"

"…So I hung back and balked on that dim coast," he continued quietly, and this time she turned around to look at him in surprise. He was still facing the photo she'd taken of the poet's tomb eleven years before. "Till thinking had worn out my enterprise, so stout at starting and so early lost." Now he looked at her, and smiled. Not smug, but pleased.

She raised an eyebrow and couldn't help casting him a delighted grin before she turned quickly back to the filing cabinet. "So… did you have to read that in high school?" she asked, but her tone was light, playful.

"Actually, I did read it in high school, but not because I had too," he replied. She noticed that his voice was coming from her right now, and she glanced out of the corner of her eye to see that he was now perusing her bookshelf.

She pushed the latest drawer closed and opened the last one in which she could possibly imagine having put the Eldridge file. The disposition of their case had changed enough times since she'd began working with them that she'd re-filed it half a dozen times, and couldn't remember if she'd moved it at all since the last time she'd talked to Valerie, three long months before. She technically should have relocated it to basement storage where ACS kept inactive files, but she'd held onto it for this exact reason.

She found it at last, under Valerie's maiden name in the section she stored files needing home address verification. She pulled it out and opened it, flipping through the pages of reports and notes that she'd made from her visits with the family. Briefly, she wondered if there was anything in the file that the detectives would be able to use against her, and was immediately annoyed with herself for the thought. They couldn't find what wasn't there.

She sighed, closed the drawer and turned to face him, opening her mouth to tell him she'd found it. Instead, she almost laughed. He was sitting in the chair now, his tall frame reclined with one ankle resting on his knee, a book propped open before him.

"Careful," she said, taking one look at it. It was one she'd read for a cultural anthropology class in college. "That book is hard on spirituality."

"You mean because it supports the idea that religion is a developmental function of the state?" He glanced over the top of the book at her.

She stared at him. "Don't tell me you've actually read that?"

"It _did_ win a Pulitzer," he said wryly. "But who can resist the history of human development in under five hundred pages?" He let the book fall shut against his thigh, and his smile told her he realized quite well that the two of them were among a minority.

She laughed. "Have you read the one he published two years ago? It's just as interesting."

He shook his head. "I haven't had as much time as I'd like for reading since my…" he stopped, his eyes turning distant, and touched the knuckle of one finger to his lips.

Juliana knew he'd been about to say something personal. Something unintended. She wondered what that meant. Was there something about her that put him off his guard?

She tucked the Eldridge file under her arm, having forgotten what it was, and moved toward the bookcase. She traced several titles with her finger before she found the one she was looking for. She pulled it out and held it toward him. He took it slowly, his eyes lingering on her face for a moment. Standing that close to him, she noticed now that there was a trace of green in the dark brown.

He dropped his gaze to the back cover of the book. "Why societies choose to survive or fail?" He laughed. "And he explains this in…" he flipped to the last page… "only five-hundred _ninety_ pages."

"Social problems are remarkably reductive things," she said, leaning against the bookshelf. "Just like individual problems. The first step in solving them is recognizing where they come from and helping others acknowledge it." She nodded toward the book and smiled. "It's psychology for the social system."

Before he could say anything in response, a tap at the door captured both their attention. Juliana took the few steps between the door and the bookcase and opened it.

It was the woman…his partner.

"Hi," she said, the smile she offered Juliana seeming weary. "Is my partner…" she paused mid-question, leaning through the open doorway and seeing him. Juliana saw her raise an exasperated eyebrow, and when he glanced at the clock on her wall and quickly stood, she realized with some amusement that he'd stalled here. For what reason?

Eames flashed Juliana another smile, and nodded, backing into the hall to wait on him. He followed, but lingered in the doorway, holding the book toward her.

"This does look interesting," he said. "I'll read it."

"Keep it. I have another copy somewhere," she lied, waving it away.

For a moment, she thought he would refuse, then he tucked it under his arm. "Thank you," he muttered, smiling shyly, and he was out the door.

Juliana watched them walk away.

A detective that could quote Dante…that read obscure anthropology texts in his spare time…What else was there to him, she wondered?

Sighing, she turned and walked around her desk She noted again the stack of files she had to reorganize, and sat down tiredly, tossing the folder she held under her arm onto the table in front of her.

She picked it up again and stared at it.

At that same moment, there was another light tap at her door. She looked up, and tried not to smile.

She held the folder out to him.

---

---

---

---


	6. Upheaval Part II

December 29th, 1:50 P.M.

Major Case Squad

Detectives Goren and Eames

-

Alex folded back another page of the file Juliana Everett had given her partner, but realized she was too distracted to concentrate on the contents. The pretense of skimming through it was more of an excuse to keep from staring in rapt attention at her partner while she listened to his side of what must have been a disconcerting telephone conversation. Truthfully, his "side" of the conversation was fairly minimal: he'd told the woman on the other end that he was a detective investigating a murder in New York City, and asked if he could talk to her about her step-daughter, and had apparently not had much opportunity to interject more than the occasional word. She'd watched a variety of expressions cross his face over the last half hour, from surprised, to amused, to irritated. Now, he seemed a little pale, and disturbed.

"I really don't think that will be necessary, Mrs. Everett, but…" He paused, pressing his fingers into his eyelids and nodding his head.

"Yes," he said, and Eames knew him well enough to hear in his tone that his patience was drawing to an end.

"If that happens I'm sure the D.A. will…" he paused again and dropped his hand onto the table, hard. His eyes flicked to her, and he shook his head as he sucked in a deep breath. "Not yet… No… Oh… Very useful, trust me… Yep."

With that, Goren dropped the phone heavily into its cradle and lowered his forehead into his palms. Alex stared at him, waiting, until he finally dragged his hands across his face and looked up.

He leaned back heavily in his chair, offering her a weak smile. "Well that was uh…" He shrugged, and shook his head again.

Eames leaned forward, elbows on the file she'd been pretending to look through. "She kept you on the phone for almost an hour," she said, a hint of amusement in her voice. "She say anything useful?"

Goren scratched at a spot on the back of his neck, his brows knitting together as he seemed to contemplate that. "Not in the way_she_ thought," he said at last. "She didn't seem surprised at all that a murder investigation involved her step-daughter, but everything she said makes me wonder if it's not_her_ that has the problems in that family."

Eames raised an eyebrow. "What kind of problems?"

"Well… she managed to turn everything I asked her about Juliana back to herself… how it affected _her_… and from what I could gather she hasn't seen her in…" he waved a hand... "six years? Since her father's funeral. Says Juliana turned her sons against her…" He shrugged. "I'm willing to bet she probably did that herself."

"Sounds nice," Eames quipped. "What can we use?"

Goren chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, one of the several nervous habits he'd developed over the last couple of years.

"Her father didn't die of cancer. He died of cirrhosis of the liver."

"He was an alcoholic?"

Goren nodded. "Juliana's fault," he added. "For being such a selfish, demanding child."

There was a trace of bitterness in his words, Eames thought. She regarded him silently for a moment, wondering whether his evident sympathy for this pretty girl from a dysfunctional family was clouding his judgment in this case. Over the years, she had learned to trust her partner's assessment of people; his understanding of human psychology was deep, but she'd found that a certain degree of empathy in situations that reminded him of his own childhood had the possibility of becoming a blind spot in his analysis of the facts.

"You don't think it's her, do you?" she asked him then.

His eyes regained their focus, and she thought she saw a slight flush of color in his face. He looked down at the table, picked up a pencil, and set it back down.

"There's something very… genuine…about her. If it is her…" His eyes flicked to her, and back down. He shrugged and fell silent, leaving her wondering what he had been about to say.

Eames frowned, unsure whether second-guessing him was merited in this case. On one hand, even if she hadn't known him as well as she did, it would have been obvious that her partner was attracted to this woman. Whether it was just physical, or something else, she couldn't be sure, but she had a feeling that it was deeper than that. The events of the morning replayed themselves in her mind: him, reclined in a chair looking through a book in her office when he was supposed to be meeting her outside a half hour before, the way he'd forgotten the file he'd gone there for, and the way he'd smiled to himself when she'd pointed that out. Then there was the fact that he hadn't said a word to her during the ride to One P.P. – instead, he'd read the first few chapters of the book Juliana had given him, while the file on the Eldridge case lay forgotten on the dashboard in front of him.

On the other hand, however, Eames had a hard time herself in believing that the soft-spoken social worker was capable of such brutal crimes. She was certainly intelligent enough to have left nothing but a brick wall behind for investigators, and she did come from a messed up family, but who didn't these days? That in itself didn't constitute guilt.

Goren looked up then, and his brow creased slightly at the expression on her face. She saw in his eyes that he'd read doubt there, although perhaps misinterpreted it.

"Bobby, I think…" she began, but at that moment, the door to Ross' office swung abruptly open and the captain stepped out. Goren looked over his shoulder as Ross froze there, seeing he'd caught their attention. Frowning, he beckoned them with a short gesture.

Goren glanced back at her before he stood, but turned away again too quickly for her to read his face. She rounded their desk and followed her partner, who passed Ross with eyes downcast, into the captain's office. Ross shut the door behind them and crossed the room, settling into his chair and indicating with a wave of one hand that the two of them do likewise.

Eames took a seat beside her partner, who stared morosely at the floor in front of him. She felt her heartbeat quicken as she waited for Ross to speak, wondering if the captain had made some decision about Goren that neither of them was going to like.

"So you talked to this social worker yesterday," Ross began, leaning back in his chair.

Eames took a deep, even breath. _The case_. Of course that was what he'd called them in there to talk about. She glanced at her partner, and thought she saw the same surprised relief in his expression as he stared at Ross. The captain raised his eyebrow dramatically, looking from one of them to the other as they both reacted with silence to his question.

"Yes," Eames said quickly. "We did." And then she promptly had no idea what else to say. "_And we don't think she did it?"_Was that the truth?

Ross nodded slowly, waiting for a moment, and when neither of them seemed prepared to expound, he continued.

"What does that famous gut of yours tell you, Goren? Did she do it?"

Goren shifted uncomfortably, and held one hand slightly aloft from the arm of the chair he'd been clutching tightly.

"I don't see anything that makes me believe that," he said finally, his voice quiet.

"What about this connection to both crime scenes?" Ross asked. "And witnesses putting her there near the time of death? Trained in forensics, too."

Goren shrugged. "It's not her," he said, and this time Eames heard more confidence in his tone. As though he'd just decided to believe it.

Eames watched Ross curiously, wondering why he hadn't asked her what she thought. In fact, he'd hardly looked in her direction. Neither did her partner, for that matter.

"Captain," she began, meaning to tell him that she had to go with Goren on this one, but Ross, green eyes still on her partner, interrupted her.

"I took the liberty of checking with forensics," he said tersely, and Eames felt a surge of irritation. "The knife that turned up in the canvas is your murder weapon. Or.. one of them."

Goren looked up sharply. "The one that killed Jhosa," he guessed.

Ross nodded. "But not the boy. The blade that killed Damien was probably a straight razor. And it's the same type of blade used to kill Devon Eldridge."

Goren leaned forward in his chair. "It has some sort of ritualistic significance to the killer," he mused. "The children… he kills them swiftly, with relatively little pain. Their deaths mean something else to him. Maybe…"

"Him." Ross interrupted Goren now, who faltered, confused. Before he could recover, Ross lifted several printed pages from his desk. As he looked at them, turning one page over, and then back, Goren glanced quickly at her and Eames shrugged, shaking her head.

"Latent checked out the knife that killed Jhosa," he went on, now holding the paper out toward Goren. "Two sets of prints. One belongs to Sarah Moore. One to your pretty blonde."

Eames felt her heart skip a beat in surprise. She looked quickly from the captain to her partner. He stared mutely at Ross, but Eames caught the sharp rise of his chest. After a moment, he reached out and snatched the report out of Ross' hand. She watched his face, seeing his brow furrow, his eyes narrow. After looking over both pages more than once, he leaned back slowly in his chair, the hand holding the report dropping weakly into his lap.

Ross watched him, and Eames watched them both. The captain, she thought, was doing his best not to look smug, which was facilitated by that ever-present apprehension that her partner seemed to instill in him. As though Goren were a ticking time-bomb that might at any moment upset his carefully ordered equilibrium.

Her partner's eyes were distant, anger in the lines creasing his forehead. And something else.

"This is more than damning enough," Ross said at last. "Bring her in."

Goren looked at him. "It doesn't make sense," he said quietly, as though more to himself.

"Fingerprints make sense to me," Ross said.

"You want us to arrest Sarah Moore too?" Goren snapped, but Eames knew him well enough to hear that his anger wasn't directed at Ross, but at himself.

"If the knife wasn't part of their household dining set, yes," Ross went on. "Or didn't you notice that? Arrest Miss Everett. You can figure out _why_ she did it later."

Goren stared at him for a short moment.

Then he stood abruptly and walked without a word out of Ross' office, leaving the door standing open behind him.


	7. Upheaval Part III

Major Case Squad

December 29th 8:12 P.M.

-

Although Eames herself winced at the force with which Goren slammed the door, she was looking at Juliana, and saw that the other woman might not even have heard it. All the color had drained from her face, and her dark eyes were distant. Juliana moved around the table, seeming not to see the chair, and moved as though instinctively to the far side of the small room, backing against the wall and crossing her arms around herself, not looking at either of them, and totally expressionless.

Her partner rounded the table as well, his eyes full of fire as he glared at their pale suspect. As he passed the chair, he jerked it away from the table, setting it sharply down at the end, closer to Juliana.

"Sit down," he said, his voice harsh. Very unlike him.

Eames saw the other woman's eyes narrow very slightly, but she moved, and sank into the chair, still without looking at either of them. Her arms remained crossed around her, as though she were cold, her fingers digging into her upper arms. Hard, by the looks of her white knuckles. Eames couldn't help feeling sorry for her as she took her own seat across the table.

Her partner joined her, dropping his leather binder unceremoniously between them. Eames shot him a glance, but he was staring at Juliana, a clear look of anger transforming his face. She'd only seen him like this a few times. Dan Croyden. Nicole Wallace. She tried to think of what it could be about this woman that had gotten to him so badly, but nothing specific would come to mind. Was it only that she had fooled him into believing she was innocent, or was there more to it?

She opened her mouth to speak, but Juliana beat her to it.

"She didn't confirm what I told you," she said, and there was a horrible lack of emotion in her flat voice that Eames found she couldn't justify with either innocence or guilt. For a moment, she just looked at her, until she realized Goren, for once, had no intention of speaking.

Juliana had given them an explanation for her fingerprints being on the knife; it was a simple one, and not particularly creative. She'd been at the Moore's apartment during one of her regular visits Thursday afternoon, had seen a knife on the coffee table where the three year old could have reached it, and had picked it up. "Um… no, Juliana," Eames told her. "She said you hadn't been there since the Thursday before."

Juliana's eyes closed for a moment, then flicked to her partner, and then to her.

"So what did you tell her that makes her think I did it? To convince her she just needs to lie because you can't find the evidence."

"Your fingerprints are _on_ the murder weapon," Eames told her, but she heard a lack of conviction in her own voice. They'd had a uniform bring Sarah Moore downtown, to go over details, including Juliana's explanation. Eames had looked the distraught mother in the eyes and seen there something stretched beyond reason. Someone not thinking clearly. Her partner… Eames didn't know what he'd seen, or had failed to see. Goren's mood had deteriorated drastically from the revelation in Ross' office to this moment…the former hint of confidence in her innocence had all but vanished when Sarah Moore had told them their suspect was lying.

"Why'd you do it, Juliana?" Goren asked then, his voice low, personal.

Juliana stared at him, and didn't answer. Eames glanced at Goren, but it was as though he and the other woman were alone in the room together.

"Your father," Goren said, flipping open his notebook and leaning back in his chair, folding his arms. "He died of cirrhoses of the liver when you were…" he glanced at his notes "twenty-eight."

Juliana said nothing, but Eames saw her chest rise as she took a deep breath.

"What was he like?" Goren continued, his voice full of accusation. "Did he drink at home, or did you used to lie awake at night wondering when he'd come back? What kind of drunk was he? Mean? Or just neglectful?" The last word dripped with spite.

Eames tried to interpret the expression on Juliana's face. It was accusatory in its own manner. Of her partner.

"He didn't protect you," Goren went on, "He never noticed that your step mother hated you, did he? How'd that feel?"

Juliana leaned forward slowly over the table, propped her elbows on it, and twined her fingers together against her lips. Goren leaned forward too, his eyes locked on hers.

"It _hurts_, doesn't it? When the people that are supposed to protect you abandon you," he said quietly. "You said your father wasn't your problem growing up, but he _was_. He didn't care. He didn't care about you, did he?"

Eames thought she saw moisture in Juliana's eyes, but no tears fell.

"My father.." Juliana began, but faltered, looking at the table.

"You said it…_pissed you off_… that Jhosa Moore left his kids alone. Like your father did to you. So you went there Saturday night. You killed him, and you killed Damien, because he was too much of a chip off the old block." Goren's voice rose at the end, angry. "A sick kind of social justice?"

"Social justice?" Juliana snapped, fire creeping into her voice. "Social justice has no value at all if it's merely in the eye of the individual, Robert Goren. According to your theory here, either I'm too sick to think rationally, or I'm a pathetic, disillusioned excuse for a martyr."

Eames glanced at her partner, expecting to see him acknowledge a sense of logic that she herself found it hard to deny, but he merely glared at Juliana.

"Your step mother said you always harbored a lot of anger toward men," he chided venomously .

Eames jumped when Juliana's palm slammed hard against the table.

"My step mother is a narcissistic calamity," she leaned forward across the table, closer to Goren. "She knows nothing about me."

"A narcissistic calamity," Goren echoed. "Like Carl Eldridge?"

Eames saw Juliana suck in a sharp breath, and she sat back hard in her chair. "Ok," she said, still speaking only to Goren, "overly intuitive conjecture aside, let's try to look at the facts, shall we?. You were quick to point out when we first met that I don't have to be a social worker. I have a Ph.D. in _forensic_ anthropology. _Tell_ me why I'd leave the murder weapon lying about, complete with a good set of prints, but _no_ other forensic evidence."

Goren didn't skip a beat. "Maybe it was unconscious. Maybe part of you is ready to get caught."

"I'm not a killer," she whispered.

Goren pushed a few pages back in his notebook, and pulled out a picture, slapping it onto the table in front of Juliana. It was Damien Moore, his jugular vein carved in half, his face dead, pale, his eyes blank. Eames watched Juliana's face for her reaction, and wasn't sure what to think when there was nothing. Just a flick of her eyes to the photo, away, back to Goren.

Eames couldn't help but be curious. "You don't seem… very disturbed. You knew this boy."

Juliana's dark eyes glanced at her. "I know he's dead. You forget my higher education is essentially in human remains," her voice was cold, quiet, and resigned.

Before Eames could respond, Goren pushed the macabre photograph across the table, closer to Juliana, and asked her coarsely:

"This is what you mean by children not growing up to be their parents?"

Juliana snatched the picture off the table and turned it over, slamming it down in front of him, and now Eames was sure she saw tears in her eyes.

"You're wrong," Juliana whispered. "And you're smarter than this."

Goren leaned back in his chair, and seemed about to say something else, but at that moment the door opened, unexpectedly. Eames glanced over, and felt a mixture of disgust and surprise.

The man that interrupted the interrogation was tall, handsome, with strange, almost colorless grey eyes. They were utterly distinctive eyes, that Eames remembered from a trial the year before, where she and her partner's case against the jewel thief Federico Mendez had ended in utter disaster.

She glanced quickly at Goren, and saw his face registering the same thing, and then she looked to Juliana, wondering what it was about this girl that had brought a ruthless attorney in a three-thousand dollar suit to her defense.

She saw Juliana sigh, deeply, and look away.

Then she noticed the resemblance. The cheekbones. The shape of the eyes, if not the color. Jozua _Everret._ Her brother?

"Detectives," Jozua said, his voice devoid of inflection, but his cold eyes sharply intelligent, intimidating. "This interview is over."

"Jozua," it was Juliana that spoke, to Eames' surprise. "I don't need a lawyer. I didn't do this."

"Your fingerprints are on the murder weapon, Juliana." His grey eyes flicked to Goren. "One of New York's brightest detectives thinks you did it. Be quiet." Jozua backed slightly out of the door, holding it open, wide. He held his arm out to them both.

Eames saw Goren flash one last, frustrated glance at Juliana, then he snatched the photo from the table, shoved it in his binder, and stalked past the lawyer.

She sighed, and followed.

-

Eames checked her watch as she allowed the arrogant lawyer to shut the door to their own interrogation room behind her. It almost seemed like some cruel twist of fate that brought Jozua Everett into the picture. Her partner was already stretched thin, and this particular defense attorney was one of the most abrasive and unethical of his kind that she'd come across in her career.

It was later than she thought. Almost nine at night. They were both working on a thirteen hour day. She looked up from her watch to her partner as he crossed the room.

He was moving quickly, head down. Detective Ortiz, misjudging their intersection, had to step quickly out of Goren's way, his coffee sloshing over his cup onto the floor and earning her partner a disgusted glare. Eames took a few steps after him, preparing to meet him at their desk, to convince him to go home, calm down, get some rest, but she stopped short a moment later.

Instead of reaching their desk and sitting down, Goren walked past it, but not before he threw his leather binder down. The one that never left his presence at work. It hit the desk and slid across it into the cup that held their pens and pencils, which then hit the hard floor and scattered loudly, drawing the attention of most of the squad room. He didn't seem to notice, or care, and kept moving toward the elevator, leaving his coat on the back of his chair.

The muted groan that escaped Eames was a mixture of frustration, helplessness, exasperation. It was Thanksgiving day, a year ago, when he'd walked out and told Ross he could keep his paperwork… could fire him if he wanted to. That he didn't care. He'd been coping with his mother's cancer then. What was this?

Eames refused to look worried, or even as though she'd noticed his dramatic exit from the room as she walked to their desk. She didn't stop to pick up the pens, as though ignoring them might make the rest of the squad room forget having been witness to her partner's temper. She calmly took her coat off the back of her chair and slipped it on, then followed him.

Once she was inside the elevator, she abandoned that pretense of calm and slapped the button to the ground floor. She'd check there first, before he could get too far from the building. She tapped her hand anxiously against the side of the elevator, her temples throbbing. She thought again about what Ross had said about her partner, and that possible psych evaluation, and wondered, not for the first time, whether it might be in his best interest. Of course she had no desire for the captain to get the best of Bobby, who on a good day might not look stable by such standards, but the past few days had caused her to question whether covering for him was the best thing she could do for him. The awful scene at his apartment…the mirror, the blood, the razor blade… it had lurked there in her consciousness, an elephant in a small room that she was growing increasingly afraid to ignore.

She squeezed through the elevator doors before they'd even completely opened, and scanned the lobby. It was the back of the building, the employee entrance that connected on one side to the parking garage, but she didn't look in that direction. Goren took the subway to work.

She hesitated there for a moment. The lobby was quiet, the city beyond the tinted glass doors dark. She saw Mary, the night guard, at the computer in the security station, drinking her coffee. On every occasion that Eames had come through here with Goren, Mary had never failed to exchange friendly words with them both, almost to the point of flirting with her partner.

"Mary," Eames caught her attention as she approached the desk, intending to ask her if she'd noticed Goren pass through, but the other woman didn't need to be prompted.

"What's wrong with Robert?" she asked her, concern scribed across her features.

Eames didn't have an answer for that. "Where did he go?" she asked quickly, and Mary pointed with her coffee cup at the door that opened onto Park Row. Eames felt her eyes on her as she pushed the door open and stepped outside.

It was raining, again. It wasn't entirely dark…Manhattan never was, but the moisture in the air blurred the myriad lights like a modern Monet. The cacophony of the apathetic city assailed her, and for some reason it only made her more frustrated. All those people, going about their lives, while in the scheme of it all, this person she cared about was inconsequential, and, it seemed, had vanished into the indifferent night. She bit her lip and walked into the rain, down several steps, before she stopped, overwhelmed by the futility of looking for him in a place where hardly anyone ever looked up.

It was then that she saw him.

He hadn't gone far.

The concrete steps were wide, spanning a third of the block to the street below, and he was there to her left. He sat on the third step from the bottom, his elbows propped on his knees, forehead in his hands.

Eames moved slowly, carefully, at a diagonal down the wet stairs. The rain wasn't heavy, but as she came closer, she saw he was soaked through. His pale blue shirt was dark now, and water beaded on his bent neck as though he hadn't moved for some time.

Unmindful of the rain herself, she sat down beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder and felt the fine tremor in his muscles. From the cold?

"Bobby," she said softly, hearing the grief in her voice.

The fingers holding his head curled inward, but that was her only response. She resisted the urge to put her arms around him, like a mother around a frightened boy. Instead she slid her hand under his upper arm and applied a gentle pressure.

"Come on, Bobby," she said. "Let's go back inside."

He dropped his hands abruptly from his face then, and she jerked her own hand away from him.

"I'm not going back in there," he said, looking at the street. "I can't do this anymore."

Eames stared at him for a moment, seeing a terrible emptiness in his expression.

"What do you mean?"

He still wouldn't look at her. "I can't see," was all he said.

Alex felt her brow furrow, her unease about her partner's state of mind growing as she realized how muddled his thinking was. This wasn't the partner she'd had for the last seven years. This was a man that was so trapped by self-doubt that he had second guessed himself to the point of impotence. Something he couldn't live with.

The thought of him going home like this terrified her.

"Let's go somewhere and talk, ok? It's cold out here."

He looked at her then, and she saw a deep remorse accompany realization as he saw his partner shivering there beside him in the thirty-below December night. Alex thought she saw more than rain clinging to his dark eyelashes, but he looked away again too quickly for her to be sure. Then he nodded shortly.

-


	8. Through The Dark Barrier

-

Alex pulled into the driveway, breaking gently, and turned the ignition off. She looked at him, slumped in the seat beside her, and wondered if he was asleep. The thought that she'd sit out here all night with the heat on if he was, rather than wake him up, crossed her mind briefly but was dispelled when he stirred and opened his eyes. He squinted through the windshield at the house illuminated in the headlights. She'd told him she'd take him home to get him in the car, while she'd had no intention whatsoever of doing so. Not in the state of mind he was in.

Alex braced herself for an argument, an emphatic objection to her taking him to her house, but he merely shut his eyes again and dropped his head back against the window. She frowned, unsure how to interpret his apathy. It was as if he was simply shutting down.

She opened the door and flipped off the headlights. She shut it softly and walked around the car, tapping the window in warning before she opened his door.

"Come on," she said sternly, her tone precluding objection, although her intuition told her that he was beyond arguing with her at this point.

Confirming this, he unfolded himself silently from the seat of the Honda and followed her like a disproportionate shadow into the house. Once inside, she led him into the kitchen, where with a wave of her hand, he slid mutely into a barstool at her counter, head propped in his hands again.

Alex took down a bag from the cabinet and set about making a pot of decaf coffee in silence. While it was brewing, she walked to the living room and found a blanket, carrying it back to the kitchen, and plucked Bobby's sleeve. He was shivering again, his shirt still wet from sitting in the rain.

"Take this off," she said. "You're going to get sick like this." Or sicker, she thought to herself morosely.

He gave her a narrow look over his shoulder, but seemed to see something in his partner's face that convinced him that it wasn't worth objecting, and he turned his face back to the counter without speaking. His long fingers, still trembling either from the cold or from something more, unbuttoned the front of the damp shirt, then the cuffs, and shrugged out of it. Alex hung it on the back of the barstool next to him and wrapped the blanket around his bowed shoulders.

She rounded the counter once more and poured two cups of coffee. Decaf was something she kept around for her mother, and in retrospect, she wasn't sure if she'd ever even drank it herself. The point of coffee without the benefit of caffeine had always eluded her, but at least it was hot. She set a cup in front of her partner and dragged a barstool around the counter. Taking the near empty sugar canister from beside the sink and a spoon from a drawer, she slid into the chair opposite him.

"What happened back there, Bobby?" she asked, keeping her tone gentle, free of accusation.

He'd drawn the blanket more securely around himself, one arm wrapping the two edges closed against his chest. He stared at the cup of coffee his partner had set before him for a moment before one hand emerged from beneath the blanket and he curled his fingers around, pulling it across the counter toward him. He didn't pick it up, however, and he didn't speak.

Alex spooned sugar into her coffee, stirring patiently while she watched him. The lids were half closed over his dark eyes, his expression melancholy, distant, and she couldn't tell whether he had even heard her question.

"Bobby," she repeated softly. "I'm not just your partner you know. I'm your friend. You were there for me when I needed you…" she paused and took a sip of her coffee, and in that moment his eyes flickered briefly up at her. "Let me help you," she finished, "please?"

He was silent for a moment longer, then said, very quietly, as though he was only speaking to himself:

"I almost… believed her."

Alex sat her cup down carefully, unable to smooth the quizzical look from her face. Believed her?

"Juliana?" she asked him, assuming that's who he was talking about, but unsure what he meant.

He didn't speak, but he withdrew his hand from the coffee cup and pulled the blanket tighter around himself. He looked at her then, and there was something about his eyes that disturbed her. Something… defeated, resigned.

"Bobby…" Alex began. "I don't think you were wrong about her. I think you.."

"I _was_ wrong," he interrupted, and the smile that touched his lips was completely out of place. "About all of it. Lying killers right in front of me and I can't _see_ it. Why?" The last word was almost shrill. He looked away again. "I can't do this anymore Alex."

"Do what, Bobby?" she asked.

"This job," he muttered, frowning. "It doesn't matter anyway, does it?"

Alex opened her mouth to respond, but realized she had no idea what to say to him. She rubbed her aching temple, staring forlornly at him. He wasn't making any sense, and that scared her. His face was gray, the circles under his eyes more pronounced than ever. He looked so utterly, deathly tired.

"You need to sleep, Bobby," she told him. "You should go lie down in the guest room. I'll…"

"I can't _sleep_," he interrupted her again, his tone almost disdainful, as if the suggestion were entirely ludicrous.

Alex frowned at him and considered trying to argue with him, but a thought struck her. Just over a year before, after she'd been kidnapped from her home…attacked just a few feet, actually, from where they sat now…by Jo Gage, she hadn't been able to sleep either. It had taken a prescription and her partner spending a week in the guest bedroom for her to regain her sense of security. For her to be able to sleep again.

She slid off the stool and moved to the cabinets behind her. She opened two before she found was she was looking for. It was the bottle of prescription sleeping pills her doctor had given her. She checked the expiration date, then the directions, and shook out twice the dose she'd taken. She started to replace the bottle in the cabinet, but on second thought, shoved it in the pocket of her slacks. It was at least half-full. She glanced guiltily over her shoulder, wondering if he'd noticed, but he wasn't looking at her.

She crossed back to him, and stretched her arm across the counter, dropping the two white pills beside the untouched cup of coffee.

"Take those," she said. "Then you'll sleep."

His blank gaze focused slowly on the pills, then he glanced at her and raised an eyebrow, his expression irritable. He looked as if he might object, but she spoke before he could.

"You need to sleep. You're a danger to yourself, and to me, like this," she worried that appealing to that sense of guilt he'd shown her was the wrong thing to do, but she didn't know how else to get through to him.

The annoyed look vanished from his face, his eyes a fraction wider, sad. His hand moved briefly to his face, two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, then, without a word, he slapped his hand over the pills, popped them both in his mouth, and swallowed them with a long drink of the now lukewarm coffee. When he sat the cup down, Alex could see unshed tears in the red-rimmed eyes that wouldn't look at her. Her stomach twisted in empathy for his pain, and she wished she could share it…take some of the burden from him, but it was too deeply rooted in his own being for her to do much else than try to take the edge off with simple gestures like tonight.

His emotions were so raw, so close to the surface now, and Alex felt she needed to give him a moment to himself. She picked her coffee cup off the counter and poured the remains into the sink. Then she rinsed it, dried her hands on the towel that hung from the handle of a nearby drawer. As she did, she spoke to him.

"I'm going to get a quick shower, ok? You know where the guest room is, so go lay down. I'll come in and see if you need anything before I go to bed." She glanced at him, and he nodded almost imperceptibly, his head in his hands again, eyes closed. She sighed, wondering if the pills could be so quick to take effect, and hoped, leaving him there, that he'd find his way to the bed.

-

She wiped the steam off the face of her watch with one thumb, surprised to see that she'd spent almost a half hour in the shower.

She couldn't dispel the sense of unease about Bobby that surrounded her with the locked door and that time between them. She dressed quickly, wrapped her hair in a towel, and opened the door. Steam rushed into the bright hallway- one thing left over from her experience with a serial killer was a propensity to leave more lights on than truly necessary- and she paused there, listening intently for any sound.

There was nothing. But then, she wasn't sure what she'd expected. She padded softly down the hall, passing the opening that led to the kitchen, and wasn't sure if it was relief that she felt when she saw the chair he'd occupied shoved back from the counter, empty. She passed her own room on the right, and made her way to the end of the short corridor, where the door to the guest bedroom stood open, the dim green hued light from the bedside lamp within telling her Bobby had at least made it that far.

She edged close to the opening, and tapped the side of the frame before she slowly peered around the corner. A relieved sigh escaped her lips of its own accord when she saw him, and sympathy flooded through her.

It looked as though he'd sat down on the side of the bed, turned the light on the nightstand on, and promptly passed out. His head was on the pillow, one leg drawn partially up onto the bed while the other foot was still planted on the floor. One hand rested on his stomach while the other arm was draped over his eyes, the blanket she'd wrapped about him earlier having fallen open beneath him. His breathing was deep, even, lips parted just slightly in sleep.

Alex almost smiled, but remembering that she'd had to drug him to get him this way took the amusement out of the situation. She moved toward him, and levering his other leg onto the bed, she untied his shoes and set them aside. He didn't stir in the least at the movement. She pulled another blanket off the back of a nearby chair, and started to drape it over him, when she realized his gun was still in the holster at his belt.

She didn't know why, but it sent a chill through her. Perhaps it was the realization that she didn't trust him with his weapon anymore. Perhaps it was that she could truly see him hurting himself now. But she knew she wouldn't sleep knowing it was in the room with him.

Gingerly, careful not to touch the bare skin of his stomach, she unfastened the holster from his belt. She set the gun on the nightstand and wondered, as she tucked the quilt around him, how she was going to explain relieving him of his loaded weapon in the morning. _I didn't want to find you with the back of your head blown off, Bobby._ She shuddered, and she touched his wrist, the one draped over his eyes. He stirred then, rolling over onto his side, away from her. She could see the moisture beneath his eyes that his arm had hidden before that moment.

She smoothed the still damp hair back from his forehead sadly, pinned the blanket tighter around him, and turned off the light.

She took the gun with her.

-

He opened his eyes into the sunlight…bright, clear winter sunlight that streamed through the open curtains. He rolled over, blinking, and found himself looking into the red numbers of an alarm clock. It was 10:30 in the morning. He lay there, curious at the time, but unable to remember what day of the week it was.

He sat up, realizing he was only half-clothed, and pulled the blanket around his shoulders. He recognized the room, of course…he'd spent a week here after the incident with Alex's kidnapping… but it was unclear how he'd gotten here. Where were his things? His binder, his…gun? He glanced around him as he swung his legs to the floor, and the memories of the night before began to fall into place. Talking to Sarah Moore. Her mad, grief-stricken eyes. And Juliana… He could picture her face, pale…her black eyes, intelligent, but…frightened. He could see her in the holding cell, folded into the corner, like a child. There was a familiar anger in the memory from the interrogation room. An illogical, impassioned anger. What had he said to her?

He stood, holding the blanket around his shoulders with one hand, and walked to the door. As he opened it, it finally occurred to him that today was Thursday, and that he should have been at work hours ago, as should his partner, but he caught the aroma of fresh coffee, and heard water running in the kitchen.

He rounded the corner from the hallway and he saw Alex at the sink, rinsing a cup. She was dressed for work, but for the fuzzy blue house shoes on her feet. He couldn't help an amused smirk as he walked silently toward the island bar.

Some peripheral sense alerted his partner before he reached it, and she looked at him over her shoulder. She shut the water off and set the cup in front of the coffee machine, and smiled brightly.

"Morning," she offered cheerfully.

Bobby raised his eyebrows and nodded. "Late morning," he observed aloud as he slid into the chair. Alex took a different cup down from the cabinet and poured coffee into it, setting it in front of him, but she didn't join him. Instead, she went to the refrigerator and opened it, peering in.

"I called Ross and told him we had something out of the city to run down," she told him, taking out a carton of eggs and some butter. "I didn't want to wake you up," she added, shutting the door and glancing at him again.

"Where's my gun?" he asked her, the lapses in his memory of the night before worrying him.

Alex pulled a pan out of a drawer beneath the stove. "I put it in the safe with mine," she told him simply, but there was something in her tone he couldn't place. He considered pursuing it, but as she let the pan heat, Alex changed the subject.

"Your shirt is dry," she said, opening the louvered door that served as a partition between the kitchen and her laundry space. She took the shirt down from a hanger and draped it on the back of the chair beside him.

He stared at it for a moment, remembering the steps outside One Police Plaza. The cold rain. His partner, drenched, coaxing him inside. He shivered, and suddenly the gaping holes in his memory of the day before, and his irrational behavior, seemed more ominous. He thought of his mother, and the research he'd done on her disease. Stress was thought to be a key factor in the onset of symptoms, especially at later ages.

"What happened last night?" he asked her quietly, still staring at the shirt.

Alex cracked several eggs against the side of the pan, and found the salt and pepper in an overhead cabinet before she replied.

"You got pretty upset after you…talked to Sarah Moore," she said, and Bobby didn't miss the inflection on the word _talked_.

"You think I missed something," he said, not a question. There was the suspicion in the back of his mind that that interview was where things had begun to go awry.

Alex glanced at him briefly as she stirred the eggs, and the smell of the food hit him then and sent a sharp pain of hunger through his stomach. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. She laid the ladle aside and opened another cabinet, taking down a loaf of bread. She put several slices in the toaster as she nodded.

"I think she told you what she thought you wanted to hear, Bobby. You pretty much told her Juliana did it, and then gave her an opportunity to lie for her. I wouldn't have taken it either. Not with my son's neck sliced in half."

"So you think I screwed up?" he asked her, and was immediately struck by the irony of hoping she said yes. It was a strange thing, to _want_ to be wrong.

"You know what this reminds me of, Bobby?" Alex began, taking down two plates.

He took a sip of his coffee, and recalled the emotions of the night before. It was really all he _could_ recall clearly. And he knew what she was thinking. He shifted out of the blanket and pulled the shirt to him, slipping it on while her back was turned.

"Dan Croyden," she said, unnecessarily, spreading butter over a slice of toast. "Not so much that it had to do with…fathers. But you were irrational like that then. Not thinking clearly." She ladled eggs onto the two plates, dropped the slices of toast on, and turned off the stove. She picked up the plates and moved them to the counter, setting one before him. "Tell me what was going on there, Bobby," she said as she took forks out of a drawer and handed one to him.

He looked at her as she settled into the chair opposite him. She took a bite of her toast and returned his gaze, her eyes open and concerned, not accusing. He dropped his gaze, stirred the eggs on his plate with his fork, then took a bite. Then another, before he spoke.

"I think…" he said, his voice low, eyes locked on the cup of coffee in his right hand. "Maybe it was just timing, coincidence. I don't know. But…what she said, in that first interview…about children not having to grow up to be like their parents…" His eyes flickered up to her, and then down again. He remembered the photograph then. The one of Damien. And the unshed tears in her dark eyes when she'd slammed it face down on the table.

"Bobby," Alex said then, "I think you're your own proof of that. What you've told me about your father… you're nothing like him. I mean.. with the childhood you had…" There was a sad note of compassion in the words. She paused, seeming to consider what to say next, but rather than look at her, he stared blankly at the plate of food in front of him, the conversation having dulled his appetite. "…you could have been like a lot of people we've seen on the job, but you're better than that."

He took another drink of his coffee, not sure why he didn't want to look at her. The image of the shattered mirror at his apartment passed through his mind, as did the nights leading up to it. There was still an element of that man… the one who had seen his father staring back at him… in the ache and the disappointment that was like a second skin, but there was more, too. It was the part of him that was hard to feel in that numb, fogged state of apathy that accompanied days without sleep…the Robert Goren whose empathy for others was the very thing that made him unlike his father. Since his mother's death, and the scorn she'd shown him despite his devotion to her…the lingering resentment toward his father…the brother who was no brother…that empathy was a precious commodity, a thing he held tightly to. And _she_…Juliana…had commanded it from him, and then shown him that even that…that one well of hope he clung to, he could no longer trust.

But now it was morning, with no long night behind it. No procession of maddening hours wherein thoughts ceased to make sense, events began to be recorded as feelings with no cognizant attention to detail, people became ghosts. Looking back on the last several days was like remembering something through the haze of a high fever, the only remedy for which was sleep. It was as though events hurtling past him, beyond his control, had slowed down. Pictures began to form. Logic began to quiet the chaos.

He looked up at her then. She was watching him expectantly, her eyes worried. For him. How long had he been silent?

"Thank you, Alex," was all he could think to say.

She blinked. It was clearly not the response she'd thought to receive. He thought for a moment, from the expression on her face, that she might pursue that same line of thought…about his father…but true to her nature, she moved on. His partner was not one to spend more words on a subject than necessary.

She ate several more bites of her food, and he made himself do likewise during the several quiet minutes that followed. Then Alex spoke again.

"I think you need to see the tape of the interview with Sarah Moore," she said with a certain firmness in her tone.

"Bad?" he asked simply.

Alex looked at him over her coffee cup. "Not what I've come to expect from you," she said.

"So…" he sat his fork down and sat back from the counter, folding his arms. "You think…you think Moore lied? You think Juliana's…telling the truth?" He heard the subtle lilt of hope in his voice. It made him uncomfortable, and he didn't know why.

Alex raised an eyebrow. "I think you were angry," she said, then paused, looked at the counter for a moment in thought before she looked back. "Because you think she blindsided you?" Her brow furrowed; analyzing him was not a habit of hers. "Maybe you were angry because you thought you let your personal feelings get in the way of seeing what was really in front of you…" She stopped.

He wasn't looking at her anymore. He stared at the edge of the counter, without seeing it. Instead, he saw himself in her office, the day before they'd arrested her. Her eyes, when she told him she didn't sleep much…reminded him of the way his looked in the mirror. Drained, weary. He'd realized later that suspicion had been replaced with something akin to fascination somewhere in the midst of that visit. He'd wanted to know what she was thinking when she'd taken the pictures on her wall. What was behind the look she'd given him when he finished the line from the Inferno. Why she'd watched his hands when he helped her pick up the papers she'd dropped.

He glanced back at his partner, wondering what she could see in his face. Recognition? In her own expression, he could see the vestige of the incredulity, the confusion, that he'd seen when she'd asked him if he'd gotten the file. When he'd realized that he had completely forgotten why he'd gone to Juliana's office. More than all else about the encounter, he remembered being amused at that. And it had felt good.

Had that been fuel on the fire the night before? _Personal feelings_, she'd said. Like disappointment? A chill crawled through him.

"You're right," he said. "I need to see those tapes."


	9. What Unfolds In The Light

-

Thursday, December 31st, 2007, 2:18 P.M.

One Police Plaza

Robert Goren

-

"Goren?"

He hadn't heard the door open, but he recognized the captain's voice. Something about watching Juliana in the video dampened his response; it was a moment before he wrenched his eyes away from the screen- from the pain in her face, and the anger in the face of the stranger that was him. It was the third time he had watched it, although it hadn't been necessary to see it more than once to know that his partner was right.

He glanced over his shoulder, his finger pressing the pause button. Ross stood just inside the door, propping it open with his body. The captain's green eyes glowed in the reflection of the large monitor, and Goren blinked at the bright light of the squad room that framed the other man. It took him a moment to realize the captain wasn't looking at him, but at the screen. He had a sudden, inexplicable impulse to turn the monitor off.

"This from yesterday?" Ross asked, and Goren remembered that the captain hadn't been present for his…whatever it had been. Dive off the edge?

Goren nodded, then said in a voice hoarse from hours of disuse "Yeah."

Ross pushed the rest of the way through the door and let it close behind him. He stood in the light of the various monitors, all frozen on the image of Goren and Juliana Everett, their eyes locked across the table.

"What'd you get out of this interview?" Ross asked, and Goren almost laughed.

"It's useless," he said, and then because the realization hit him with the force of truth at that moment, he added: "Sarah Moore is lying. I want to bring her back in. I'll get her to confirm Juliana's explanation for why her prints are on the murder weapon."

Ross stared at him for a minute, his expression holding that familiar hint of confusion and apprehension that Goren inspired in him. "Detective," he said slowly. "You realize your job is to find the evidence to put the criminals in jail, not keep them out."

Goren pushed the stop button then and the screen blanked to the blue input display. "I think she's innocent," he said. He found himself analyzing his own tone as soon as the words left his mouth. Did he mean it?

Ross raised a dubious eyebrow. "The people upstairs are in the boat on this one. She has motive, opportunity, fits the psychological profile."

"Fits the profile?" Goren repeated with slightly more voracity than he intended. "Captain…" he added more calmly. "I developed the profile on this case..." He intended to add more, about what he saw in her, but he found he couldn't articulate it.

Ross, in any case, held up has hand to discourage any words that might be forthcoming. "I didn't come in here to argue with you," he said. "You and your partner are executing the search warrant on her apartment as soon as it comes down tomorrow morning. I want everything done by the books on this one. She's got a defense attorney working for her with more resources than the whole district attorney's office."

Goren declined to mention to Ross that it was her brother. "I don't think we're going to find anything there."

"Well, you'll look," Ross said peevishly, and Goren swiveled his chair away from the captain and tossed the remote he'd been holding moodily onto the desk.

He felt Ross staring at him, and he waited for some further instruction on the manner in which he should do his job, but it never came.

"I came in here to tell you there's someone waiting in interview two that says he has something for you on the case."

Goren looked at the captain now, curiously. "Did he say who he was?"

Ross shook his head. "Some kid with green hair. Won't take his sunglasses off."

Goren raised both eyebrows and took the opportunity to gladly escape from the captain's presence.

As he emerged from the media room, he glanced quickly about for his partner, but Eames was nowhere in sight. He did notice, however, that a number of the other occupants of the squad room cast him a variety of glances, ranging from curious to apprehensive. He knew at least half of them probably thought he was more than a little cracked.

It hadn't bothered him until recently.

He paused at his desk long enough to pick up his notebook, then crossed the short distance to interview two. The wide blinds that were usually open against the interior of the glass-faced room had been drawn, where they had not been an hour earlier. Goren couldn't imagine Ross having done that.

Tucking the binder under his arm, he turned the handle and slowly pushed the door in, peering into the room. At first, he didn't see anyone, but as he edged around the door and shut it softly, he saw his visitor.

He couldn't tell, however, if his curious visitor had marked his entrance. The younger man sat with long legs drawn up in the chair in front of him, hands clasped around his calves. He looked as though he'd just stepped out of 1972…polyester bellbottoms, paisley shirt, corduroy jacket…the whole works, and wearing, as Ross had mentioned, big, orange tinted sunglasses that hid the top half of his face.

Goren took in his strange appearance with a passing appraisal, but was more interested in the fact that the kid didn't move…didn't appear to notice him at all…than he was in the bright green hair that was gelled away from his head in all directions. Slowly, Goren approached the end of the table, trying to catch a glimpse of his eyes through the side of his sunglasses.

He cleared his throat quietly then, and his visitor came to life. He could tell from the sharp spasm of muscles that he'd startled him, but the surprise was mastered quickly. What he could see of the face that turned toward him registered no embarrassment. Goren waited a moment for him to say something, but had the impression instead that he was being intently studied.

"I'm uh…Robert Goren," he said into the slightly uncomfortable silence. "You're here to see me?"

The other man nodded, and then he lifted his hand and pointed across the table at an empty chair.

Goren raised his eyebrows at the gesture, but decided to play along. He skirted the corner of the table and pulled the chair opposite his bizarre, silent visitor closer to the table. He settled into it, and laid his binder down in front of him. Then he leaned back, folded his arms, and waited.

It was more than a minute before he spoke. When he did, his voice was very quiet. "You asked my mother about her," he said, "but if the truth matters to you, then ask _me_."

Goren had leaned forward instinctively to catch the other man's soft words, and it struck him at that moment who sat across from him.

"You're her…half-brother," he mused aloud.

"She is my sister," he responded quickly before he'd even finished.

Goren noted the pointed distinction. So there was some depth of familial attachment in her family…some bond between siblings he hadn't factored in to counterbalance the parents?

"You're…River," he said, and when the other man didn't respond, he added "right?"

"Although I guess I could be Jozua in disguise," he said then, his tone flat, but with the barest trace of a smirk at one corner of his lips. "If subtle details tend to escape your notice."

The comment struck a chord in him before he realized that there was more to it than that. Subtle details. He couldn't be sure if the double entendre was intentional, but now he saw something he hadn't before. Except for the hair, and the various facial piercings, it _could_ be Jozua sitting in front of him.

"You're twins," he said in realization.

"In the genetic sense," River agreed.

There was another moment of silence, and Goren realized that River was waiting for him to talk.

He cleared his throat again and squinted at the sunglasses.

"It's a strange gesture, you know," he commented while he opened his notebook and turned to a clear page, "to come offering truth while wearing sunglasses."

River's head tilted down slightly, and one hand twitched. Then it moved toward the sunglasses, fingers hovering there for a moment. Goren watched him curiously, and realized that the hesitation was genuine. The younger man finally pulled his hand away, fingers clenching against his knee, and Goren's interest was piqued. So the sunglasses were something he was afraid to be without. Why? Some physical deformity he was hiding, or something deeper?

"So…how long has it been since you saw your sister last?" Goren asked him gently.

"I saw her during my last break," he said. "Over the summer."

Goren nodded. "Break from?" he asked.

"School," River said shortly, his head turned slightly, as though the conversation taxed him. His right foot, still drawn up into the chair before him, tapped the empty air nervously.

"Where is that?" Goren asked, keeping his tone light, interested.

River turned his face toward him again. "M.I.T." he said. "In Boston."

He knew where M.I.T. was. And what kind of people went there. The top minds in science. For some reason, Goren found himself thinking of Wally Stevens.

He decided to leave that topic, having the sudden insight that too many questions about him would unsettle Juliana's peculiar younger brother more than this visit to One Police Plaza already had.

"So what is it that you want me to know about your sister, River?" he asked.

At this, River dropped his feet to the floor and spread his hands in front of him in a gesture that was almost pleading. "She's not a killer. This whole weird drama is the most fucked up irony I can imagine for her," he paused to suck in a breath after the rush of words, then continued more calmly. "She's the only one that escaped our family unscathed."

"I doubt that," Goren said softly, without meaning to.

"And the basis for your skepticism is?" River asked in an utterly toneless way that Goren felt was chiding, coming from him.

There was only one response for it. "I know what it's like to grow up with parents like yours," he said softly, looking at the blank paper in his notebook. He couldn't shake the feeling of guilt in the pit of his stomach. As though he had betrayed someone.

River spoke after a quiet moment, and now his voice was softer. "I can imagine what Jacqui told you about her. She hates Juliana because she reminded our father of his first wife. Because she thought our father loved her more. She thought if she just had children of her own, our father would forget his first wife. So when he still stayed out all night, still drank himself to sleep, she blamed us too."

Goren was looking at him again. He couldn't help but notice how River referred to his mother by her first name, and that he said these things…sad things…with no emotion whatsoever. Repression ran deep in this family.

"Why…" he began, and had to swallow to relieve a tightness in his throat before he could continue. "why do you say your sister is the only one that escaped…unscathed?"

He leaned back in his chair. "Well...my father drank himself to death. Jacqui long ago succumed to a psychotic state of denial...one thing among an array of others. My brother's an obsessive workaholic and he avoids women like the plague. I…" River stopped.

"You?" Goren prompted softly.

River, facing him, smiled ruefully, and indicated the sunglasses. "Let us say only that this particular manifestation but scratches the surface of it. And that it's a good thing I found a career that doesn't involve people."

"Physics?" Goren asked.

River said nothing for a moment, but Goren saw his brow furrow slightly. "Aeronautical engineering, actually," he said, his voice suspicious. "But my bachelor's was in physics. What…is that in a file somewhere?" He sounded like the idea of that bothered him immensely.

Goren couldn't help a genuine smile. "Um…no," he assured him. "But…your tattoo…" he indicated the set of symbols and numbers tattooed across the younger man's left hand, just above the knuckles. "...the equation that equals eleven point two. The escape velocity from Earth, right?"

Despite the sunglasses, Goren could feel his eyes on him before he looked slowly down at his hand, as though he'd forgotten the tattoo was visible there. When he raised his head again, he brought that hand to his face, and slowly pulled the glasses away. His striking, pale gray eyes were wide, curious.

"No wonder she was disappointed," River said airily, as though speaking to himself.

Goren stared at him. "What?"

River set the sunglasses on the table, then picked them back up and slid them into his jacket pocket. He propped his elbows on the table, fingers twined before his lips, staring at him in just the same way his sister had.

"She would only feel there was some sort of…" River's eyes searched the table for the word. "…connection?...with someone at least as perceptive as she is. But if you're as smart as she is too… why is she in jail?"

The curiosity in his question was sincere, and strangely, Goren felt his first impulse was to simply explain what had happened yesterday. All of it. But not to River. To her.

"I'll fix it," he said, a simple promise he meant more for himself than for her brother.

River stared intently at him, as though judging the sincerity of his words. "As much as my brother would like this to go to trial, I hope it doesn't get that far," he said then, a deep-seated anxiety in the words. "It won't be good for any of us. Especially her."

"Why does your brother want this to go to trial?" Goren asked.

"He'd get to cross examine your star character witness, wouldn't he?" River said. "To hold her to account for our childhood in front of everyone.Or facilitate someone else doing it just as deftly."

Goren saw where he was going, and the idea of it made him sick to his stomach. He remembered enough from the Mendez case to know Jozua Everett would get away with it, unethical as it seemed.

"My sister…" River continued "deserves better than this. She'd take a plea and go to jail for a crime she didn't commit to avoid facing that in a court room. Don't let her do that." The gray eyes were imploring, like a child's. There was a desperation to his words that was wholly infecting.

Goren could only nod.

River's unnerving gaze lingered a moment longer, then he took the sunglasses from his jacket pocket and concealed his eyes once more. He stood, and without another word or a backward glance, he disappeared through the door.

Goren was alone in the room, the blinds drawn over the glass. He looked down at his notebook, where the legal pad lay white, unmarked.

As though it all might have been little more than some strange dream.

-

-

-

January 1st, 2008 - 7:43 P.M.

Riker's Island, NY

-

He paced.

The room was in an outer wing, and there was one window opposite the door. The sun had set more than an hour earlier, and now all that was visible through the combination of glass and metal crosshatching was the distant blur of lights across the water. The only furnishings in the room were a battered steel table and three chairs- it was an older and more austere version of the interrogation room where he'd seen her last.

Now, however, the empathy that had been beyond his grasp in that room flooded into him through the cold concrete of the prison.

She was in the maximum security wing, and it was only the barest hint of solace that they'd put her in solitary confinement; she worked for the state, and she'd been accused of killing children. Less than that could get someone killed in a place like this.

The thought that his indelicacy in handling the interview with Sarah Moore might have been the decidingfactor in an undeserved fate bothered him more than he had words to express. It was why he'd come here. Repentance, of a kind.

Repentance. That meant he had to admit he was wrong.

He had no evidence that proved she was innocent. They hadn't found the blade that had killed Damien at her apartment, but they hadn't found it in someone else's either. Sarah Moore had, the second time he'd spoken to her, confirmed Juliana's story about the prints on the knife that had killed Jhosa, but Randle was, he had to grudgingly admit, right about the fact that it didn't dismiss the possibility of her guilt. The stark, candid words of her brother compelled him also, in a way he couldn't explain, but he had to acknowledge the fact that both Juliana and River came from the sort of family that was a classic breeding ground for sociopaths.

A garden of vice.

The grating of a steel bolt stilled his restless motion, and brought his eyes to the door. It opened outward, and for a moment all he saw was the female guard as she disengaged her keys from the lock. Then the woman pulled the door wider, and with one hand touched what was beyond his sight.

Juliana stepped around the corner.

She froze so abruptly when she saw him, that the guard who was entering behind her came up hard against her back.

The other woman placed a firm grip on Juliana's arm and guided her roughly forward. "Move it, honey," she snapped, and Goren felt his eyebrows come together. He took a step forward before he stopped himself. This was Riker's.

There was anger in Juliana's face, but it was directed at him. She jerked her arm out of the guard's grip and backed a step around her.

"Do I have to do this?" she asked the other woman, who, clearly not expecting the question, only stared at her. Juliana turned her gaze on him again, and he knew she hadn't slept since he'd seen her last. Dark circles marred the pale skin underneath her fevered eyes. The fear and despair he saw there burned through him.

He waved the guard away, and when she moved toward the exit, Juliana turned sharply and stepped in front of her. "Take me back to my cell," she said, moving to stand with her shoulder against the concrete wall beside the door.

"Juliana, _wait_," he said.

She didn't look at him, but the guard did. Her expression was quizzical, but not amused. Goren ignored her, and moved around the table cautiously, as if approaching a frightened animal.

"I just want to talk to you," he said. "Please."

Juliana looked sharply at him, but the anger was gone, replaced by a drained resignation.

"Haven't we spoken enough?" she said, and held her hands aloft, drawing his gaze to the silver manacles binding her slender wrists.

Goren glanced at the guard briefly. "Take those off," he said, indicating the handcuffs with a tilt of his head.

She looked at him dubiously. When she spoke, her tone was mocking. "You know what she's in here for don't you? They said she…"

"_Take_ them off," Goren snapped, and then drawing a deep breath, he added "please."

The guard shrugged dramatically and flipped through her keys. "Whatever you say, boss," she bit, and pulled Juliana's hands toward her roughly. She unlocked the cuffs and returned them to her belt, then without a backward glance, slammed the door behind her and locked them inside.

Juliana remained beside the door, her back now pressed against the wall, and her face turned away from him. Not for the first time, he had to still the impulse to reach out, to touch her. To draw her next to him and hold her. Was it a genuine feeling, wholly for her, or the part of him that hated to see a woman this way? Vulnerable and afraid.

Keeping his eyes on her, he stepped to the side and pulled a chair away from the table. Gently, remembering his vicious demeanor the last time they'd faced each other this way.

"Will you sit down?" he asked her, and backed around the table, where he pulled a chair out opposite the other.

She only moved her head, looking up at him. Her long hair was un-combed, falling loose against the bright orange prison jumpsuit that was obviously too large for her. It made her look much younger than her thirty-four years.

Except for her eyes.

"Why are you here, Robert?" she asked, making no move to sit down.

Something about her using his first name made him feel worse.

"I was wrong," he said. He'd meant about Sarah Moore, and about the way he'd treated her, but when the words left his mouth, something stopped him from voicing that distinction.

Juliana continued to look at him, though he couldn't interpret the expression on her face. "Isn't it… a little late for that?"

Goren bowed his head, pressing two fingers against his eyelids. He was suddenly, overwhelmingly tired. "Maybe not," he said softly.

Juliana laughed, a weird, strained sound that brought his gaze sharply back to her. He could see moisture in her eyes. She spread both arms out in a helpless gesture.

"_Maybe not _isn't so comforting," she said, and a tear slid down her cheek.

Goren swallowed, his throat tight, and waved a hand toward the chair. "Just sit," he pleaded, "listen to me."

She pressed her hands against her face, rubbing her palms across her eyes. She took a deep breath that made her frame shudder, then she dropped her arms to her side and crossed the few feet between herself and the chair. She slid into it, drawing her feet up in just the way her brother had. Her eyes stared pointedly at the wall, her expression blank.

Goren groped behind him for the chair, and sat down across from her. "I met your brother," he told her.

Juliana raised an eyebrow. "I was there," she said.

"Not Jozua," he said.

Now Juliana looked at him, her brown eyes wider with surprise. "River?"

Goren nodded, and couldn't help the ghost of a smile that formed at the memory. Unsure how she would interpret that, he looked down, focusing on the motion of his thumb and forefinger. "He um…came to see me," he told her. "He wanted me know that nothing your step mother said about you was true."

"And he didn't have a panic attack?" Juliana asked, her voice a mixture of fond amusement and taut anxiety.

"No... he even took his sunglasses off," Goren said, glancing up and smiling shyly. He felt the smile fade before her incredulous expression.

"Did he?" she said, and it almost seemed that there were tears in her strained voice.

He nodded slowly, not understanding. She continued to stare at him for a moment, then she smiled. Sadly.

"He only takes those off for two people," she said, then added in a whisper "Who are you?"

Before Goren could even begin to imagine how she meant for him to answer that, she waved a hand and shook her head. Dropping her feet to the floor, she pulled her chair closer and folded her arms on the table in front of her.

"So he would have told you my step-mother is a compulsive liar, that she hates me, and that nothing she says about me can be taken for truth." She looked intently at him. "But I told you that myself. Why believe him, and not me? I thought the first time I spoke to you that…" She stopped, her forehead falling weakly into her hands, eyes closed. A deep sigh moved her shoulders, and he saw the fine tremor in her fingers.

This time he couldn't stop himself. He extended his hand to her, his fingers brushing her wrist, circling it gently, and releasing it when she reacted in surprise to his touch. Her hands returned slowly to the table. She looked at him…not offended, or angry, but curious, her lips parted just slightly.

He withdrew, and leaning with elbows against the table, he twined his fingers together, pressing them against his lips, and watched her silently over the curve of his hands.

"I…" he had to clear his throat to continue. "I talked to Sarah Moore again today."

Juliana's dark eyes searched his, and he waited for her to say something. But she merely shifted, propping her head in one hand and raising an eyebrow.

"You were…right," he went on hesitantly, remembering that the last time he'd let his emotions get in the way of the investigation, he hadn't had the opportunity to apologize. "She confirmed what you told us…about the knife."

"What made you decide to talk to her again?" Juliana asked.

Goren dropped his hands to the table, fingers still tightly intertwined. He rubbed one palm with his thumb, focusing there instead of on her. "I watched the tapes," he said, his eyes fluttering up, and then back down. "The first time…" He inhaled deeply, and let the breath out slowly. "I didn't listen. To either of you."

When she didn't say anything, he looked up again. He shifted uncomfortably under her intense, silent stare. Had he made another mistake, coming here?

"I'm sorry," he added quietly.

At that, delicate lines creased her forehead, and he thought there was sorrow in her eyes. The hand that still rested on the table moved, as though she meant to reach across the table toward him, but stopped, fingers curling in.

"You were just doing your job," she said with a trace of bitterness.

Goren shook his head slowly. "That's the point," he told her. "I wasn't." He unlaced his fingers and studied his hands. "A detective…isn't supposed to allow his emotions to…get in the way of his ability to reason."

"You're human," Juliana responded softly.

He looked at her. "You can't find that very…consoling, right now," he said.

She shrugged. "Humanity can be inconvenient in some cases, but both of us have seen the alternative."

The truth of those words resonated within him, and he could only nod.

Juliana smiled sadly. "You don't sleep much either, do you?"

He shook his head.

"I know why I don't," she said. "What keeps _you_ up at night?" There was nothing chiding in her tone. Only curiosity. That, and the strange sense of remoteness he felt in that small, locked room, made him want to answer her.

"The past," he said quietly. "And how I can't… escape it. Even less so since…" He looked at the table, and sighed deeply. What was he doing, exposing his inner demons to a woman he couldn't even claim to know? And here, of all places.

"Since what?" she encouraged softly.

For a moment he didn't respond, his attention on the rhythmic motion of his fingers against the tabletop. And then he told her. "Since my mother died. Three months ago."

"What didn't you resolve?" she asked, and he glanced up. It wasn't a question he had expected. He shook his head impulsively, to deflect the intrusion into the darker places of his soul, but saw in his mind's eye the video of that interrogation. The grief in her face as he'd brought the ghost of her father to bear.

He took a deep breath. "At the end, she blamed me for…putting her in Carmel Ridge… the cancer treatments she hated, for…not being my brother." He looked down again. "I never told her that I tried to get him to come to the hospital. She waited for him to rescue her from my…inadequacy… until the day she died."

Juliana said nothing for a moment, but he didn't look at her. For some reason, his pulse had climbed.

"Carmel Ridge…" she repeated at last. "What diagnosis?"

He rubbed his thumb against an ink stain on the table. "Um… schizophrenia," he said. "I try to tell myself that I shouldn't…that I can't take it seriously, but…" he trailed off.

"But it still hurts," she finished, and he looked up. He met her eyes, and nodded shortly. That there could be sympathy in her tone…in her expression…after all that had happened to her, astounded him. It did more than perhaps all else had to convince him that she wasn't capable of the crimes they had accused her of.

Now Juliana looked at the table, her eyes distant. "I don't think I'd ever really…thought about my father the way you…portrayed him," she said quietly, "until that day, at least. I suppose I always blamed my step-mother for my...less than ideal childhood." The corner of her lips turned up in a rueful smile that Goren found disconcerting in its incongruity.

"You saw your father as a victim?" he asked her, "Like you?"

For a moment, he thought perhaps she hadn't registered the question, but at last she nodded slowly.

"Blaming him for withdrawing…for drinking… seemed like blaming him for missing my mother. It was easier to blame Jacqui, although I won't suggest she doesn't deserve it."

Goren heard the bitterness in her words, and felt it reciprocated. "For years, I blamed my mother for driving my father away. Later I blamed his indifference…but…" he shrugged.

"Blame…" Juliana said, meeting his eyes. "It's a poor salve , isn't it?"

He nodded. It had done him no good.

Juliana was silent for a moment. As he watched her, unsure what to say now, she stared at the table, a slight furrow creasing her brow. Then she tapped the tips of her fingers lightly against the metal surface between them.

"Statistically…very few victims of emotional abuse turn out to be like their abusers…but…" she paused for a moment, but didn't look up. "…turn their conditioned self-loathing in on themselves. They're so convinced they'll fail…at relationships, at being parents themselves… that they condemn themselves to it." She trailed off, seeming deep in thought.

He knew she was talking about herself, but he felt that she meant the words for him as well. It crossed his mind to mention to her that he'd read the unfinished copy of her thesis that they'd taken in the search of her apartment, and that it was part of the reason he was here, but at that moment she looked up.

"Anger…" she said."…it can be good, if it means you realize that you deserved better. Then you can stop blaming yourself. But the anger is only a stone in the path, not the path itself."

"You make it sound simple," he observed quietly, realizing that either she truly believed it, or her capacity for duplicity exceeded anything he'd encountered in his career.

Juliana looked down again, and after a brief silence, she moved her hand, the tips of her fingers coming to rest delicately on his own.

"You know that's not true," she said, her voice barely a whisper.

He didn't know what to say to her. As the light pressure of her fingers against his crowded out thought, so did the consciousness of his inability to draw away.

Until the shrill scrape of metal that was the door opening.

At the unexpected noise, the brief contact was broken sharply. She tucked her hand into her lap, and turned her head toward the sound. His hand remained where it had been, and he watched the blood drain from her face, fear replacing composure there, before he too glanced at the door.

The guard that had brought Juliana to the small room hovered there, watching them curiously. When Goren looked at her, she held up her hand, fingers splayed.

"You've got five, detective. Wrap it up."

The door slammed shut again.

Juliana looked at him, and there was no mistaking the question in her eyes.

"I'll get you out of here," he said.

Her eyes held his. "You believe me?"

_Did he?_ Could he trust his intuition with her? "Yes," he said quietly.

For a moment he wondered if she would ask why, or say something about his earlier doubt, but she didn't. There was a note of anxiety in her next words, but no blame.

"Do you think it will even be possible now? My brother said that even if Sarah testified that what I said about the knife was true, it might not be enough to get me out."

Goren shifted in his chair, remembering Randle saying something very similar. He shook his head. "I have to…" he inhaled deeply and felt a wave of guilt and anger, when he realized that what he had to say was such a weighted truth. "The quickest way is for me to find the real killer."

Instead of contempt, again, there was sympathy in her expression, and he wondered at it. What kind of person had sympathy to spare while facing life behind bars for a crime she didn't commit?

"So I'll…be here until then," she said, but to herself, it seemed, rather than to him. "There wasn't anything he could do about bail," she added, and he assumed she meant her brother.

Before he could say anything else, the grating noise of the door opening interrupted them for a second time. This time Juliana didn't look at the guard, but watched him. He glanced at the open door and nodded at the woman waiting there, handcuffs in her hand. Frustration boiled, a hot pressure in his chest.

He met Juliana's eyes again. "Trust me," he said, but it was more of an offer, than a command. Something he had yet to earn, but found that he hoped for, nonetheless.

She looked at him, into him, as though considering that, and there was only that keen intelligence in her eyes. Not desperation. At last, she nodded, just as the guard, still waiting in the doorway, cleared her throat irritably.

"Let's go, Everett," she said.

Goren stood with her, and as he watched the guard lock the handcuffs over Juliana's wrists once more, he wondered if offering her hope was the right thing to do. There was no denying that whoever the real killer was, he was good, and if he chose not to make another move, the scant clues that he had left thus far might not be enough even for a detective of his caliber.

He was sure about one thing, however.

As long as she was here, in this cage, he would not rest.


	10. What Unfolds In The Light Part II

Saturday, Jan 2, 2008 – 6:56 A.M.

Robert Goren

There were different kinds of insomnia- different reasons for the elusiveness of sleep.

At times, his mind couldn't leave his work behind. Echoes of conversations drifted in and out of his subconscious, teasing him with barely submerged meanings, possible clues. Images, made more distracting by the clarity of his memory, revolved like a slideshow, commanding his attention. It was, he had long ago realized, not in his nature to roll over into the comfort of blankets and darkness and shut them out. The victims. The broken people.

Then there were the nights when the ghosts of the past whispered too loudly- when he couldn't escape that vicious, endless circle of lost possibilities and cruel "what ifs." Those nights were always accompanied by a smothering sensation of being trapped, of being shackled to an existence that was gray, at best, and by a fluttering reflex of panic that asked always _is there still time_? Time to evolve?

Some nights however, there was only a sterile blankness- a numb, barren detachment that was strangely irreconcible with sleep. These were the nights when he most questioned his sanity. His mind was still, his emotions tempered, and yet he could not disconnect. Tossing and turning for hours, trying not to look at the clock to confirm that time was indeed accelerating, always resulted in nothing more than aching muscles and a throbbing headache.

He'd become inured to such nights long ago. There had been a period of time when he would continue to lie in bed, catching the alarm clock a minute before it went off, and rise irritated and frustrated. But not anymore.

Now, the various manifestations of insomnia were so familiar that he sensed impending sleeplessness before he even made the effort. It was in this stage, in what was both resignation, and acclimation, that he found himself now.

He rinsed that same straight razor under the running water of the sink, having been reduced to using the small mirror from his travel kit to shave. As he turned the faucet, he looked at his hand, where the redness had abated, and the cuts themselves, the skin knit beneath puckered scabs, itched furiously. It was beginning to heal, but it would scar.

He dried his face with a towel, closing his eyes for a moment against the softness of it, feeling that familiar burning thinness behind his eyelids. He had made no attempt to sleep that night. He knew that he would be trapped there in that cold concrete room at Riker's. He knew he would have lain there and re-examined every word, every impression, and tried to superimpose it upon the evidence. Second-guessing his intuition, when what he wanted, _needed_, to do, was trust himself.

He laid the towel aside, and by habit, turned back to straighten his tie in the mirror above the sink. But there was only an empty space there now, accentuated by a rectangular contrast of whiter paint.

His hand paused for a moment as the memory pulsed through him, then he sighed, and straightened the knot of his tie by tactile memory. The dark rage that had been the force behind that moment two days before had evaporated, as it always did, leaving behind only a lingering sense of shame, and foolishness. Shame because his temper was something he had endeavored for years to master. That temper was something he had always attributed to the bitterness his mother had reminded him of so often. A vestige of grievances unresolved, words unsaid, emotions stored away as was his wont, and now, it seemed, bound inextricably to him.

As he stared at that blank space above the sink, he remember what she'd said about blame. She'd called it "a poor salve," and that's what it was. He had found a career that allowed him to use his intuition and perception to pursue truths, but that had become a welcome, obsessive distraction from turning that deft insight on himself.

He turned the light off and left the bathroom, and as he took his suit jacket from the wardrobe, he wondered if sheer indifference and ill-disposed insanity qualified as "emotional abuse." It was strange to think that after all he had read, all his first hand experience with people driven mad by a malignant past, it had never occurred to him that the statistics applied to him as well. She'd reminded him that people who'd grown up the way he had- with parents that, although perhaps not intentionally, had convinced him he had no value- often turned that self-loathing on themselves.

He crossed the room to the door slowly, and pulling his coat on, he leaned for a moment against the doorframe.

Was that what he was doing? Turning it in on himself? Was he angry at his father for abandoning him, or was he angry at himself for not being good enough? What he had convinced himself was a fear of being like his father, he knew he must admit, was much of why he was alone.

The answer seemed simple, although superimposing logic on emotion was innately problematic.

He slipped out the door and made his way to the stairwell. It seemed, he mused as he descended the stairs, that Juliana, who had likely endured something in many ways worse than he had, believed that the _answer_ was simply to let it go. To face the truth, and admit he had hurt enough.

Pushing the foyer door open, he stepped outside and glanced at the sky. The deepening purple of the eastern horizon was limned in faint rose- the perpetual clouds of the coastal winter were absent for the third morning in a row. He drew his gloves from one coat pocket and his toboggan from another, and tucked his scarf beneath his collar before he stepped off the landing, his breath forming white clouds as he walked, hands in his pockets, toward the subway.

His thoughts drifted back to the morning before, meeting Eames at Juliana's tiny Rochdale apartment to execute a search warrant he'd already been convinced would not unearth anything to further condemn her. He'd let his partner search the kitchen drawers, the trash, the laundry… he'd looked for evidence of who she was, not what she had or hadn't done. He'd browsed the bookshelves- finding quite a few titles he'd read himself- and perused the photographs on the walls. Eames had at last called his attention to a drawer of her nightstand, filled with cheap, hardbound journals- more than thirty of them, and every page full. He'd leafed through them, and realized that several of them were decades old. These questions that he was only now beginning to ask himself, at the age of forty-seven, she had written about when she was fourteen. He'd told himself it was in the interest of the case, and had taken several of them home with him. He'd read page after page expressing her own struggle with that so-familiar anger, until sometime after she'd ended up in college, when most of her entries were about her brothers- still children in the home she'd finally escaped. Some of the things he'd read about their childhood were heartbreaking, and he felt safe in assuming that that was much of her inspiration for leaving behind a Ph.D. in Forensic Anthropology to pursue a career in social work. He'd seen the influence of her past, of her brothers, in the work she'd done on her Master's thesis, which they'd found on the hard drive of her laptop. It was an exploration of therapy for children who had been victims of emotional abuse, last modified on Sunday, December 27th, at 5:15 in the morning- the morning Jhosa and Damien were killed. There was, of course, no mention in her writing of knives, or the ultimate release of death.

Unfortunately, it was no great distance from her apartment to Harlem and the time in question, and one detective's intuition was of far less value than two ambiguous fingerprints on a weapon.

For some reason, thinking of her in a cell, and knowing that his best asset as a detective was still subject to the minutiae of a physical world, made him feel deeply, maddeningly alone.

The steps leading to the subway loomed before him, and he descended them thinking how many times he had done the same thing in fifteen years. He left behind the safe, quiet apartment, walked down the street, and stepped into the sea. The sea of suits and ties, polished shoes, muted words, blank faces that careened off his own shell of consciousness- any one of which might be a killer, or tomorrow, a victim.

He shouldered past someone stepping off the train and slid with practiced ease through the quickly closing doors.

-


	11. Blight

Saturday, Jan 2, 2008 – 6:56 A.M. (same day, same time)

--- ??? ---

It was the same dream, although the embellishments of his unconscious mind had incorporated the more recent past, the present, into the imbedded memories of his childhood. The memories that would not sleep, were never buried.

He was eleven years old. Or perhaps twelve. His perception of the past was a disordered montage of images, feelings, so steeped in repetition that there was little to distinguish one year from another.

There were minor differences in the room- there always were. Random details from deep storage, observations assembled over the years and squeezed together around a familiar center. The curtains over the window were red now, and shut. They were usually open, and although he couldn't recall what color they most often appeared, there was a sense of foreboding wrongness about _red_. The room itself, felt both smaller and larger at once… as though the walls were closer together, but the ceiling was impossibly high- stretching away into shadow and setting him on edge.

Things hid in the shadows. Every child knew that.

He was reading, as he always was in the dream, although he could never remember the book. The book itself, had at some point been a real thing, but his mind had locked that away.

The image of his father, coming through the door, had changed too. The man, once looming, too large, in the dark blue coveralls stained with motor grease- the scent of which still filled his nostrils at night- was shorter, more like a child himself. He still laughed when he snatched the book out of his son's hand, and even though he was smaller, he could still hold the book out of his reach when he tried to grab it, as he always did.

This time, though, instead of setting the book on fire- like he had done to everything he knew his son cared about- he took the lighter out of his pocket where he always kept it, and held it close to him.

And he caught fire, and burned.

This time, instead of only his father laughing, his brother was there, only not as a child, but an adult. For some reason, he was dressed as their father was, and his hair was blonde, like their father's.

They both laughed, as the images of their faces twisted and heaved through the smoke that filled the room.

--

He opened his eyes, slowly.

The smell of smoke dissipated as he lay there in the darkness, gauging the time by the quality of the dim light in his bedroom. He had spent enough nights lying awake until dawn to know that the particular shade of grey that coated the ceiling and walls was that of near-dawn.

He lay that way, prone and fully clothed above the quilt, for a moment, reordering his perception. He had ceased to awake screaming and sick from these dreams long years ago. The anger that accompanied them had also abated, as though something inside himself had slowly decayed. Now, whenever he woke, he had to still a sense of panic, an inexplicable _knowledge_ that time was short.

It was only recently that he had begun to understand that feeling.

He rose, sitting upright on the edge of the bed as he tried to remember the day of the week.

He'd told Aisha, the secretary, that he would see her on Monday.

That made it Saturday, with a setting of the sun between then and now.

He stood, circled the bed, and disengaged the deadbolts from his bedroom door. He paused in the doorway and listened, his eyes scanning the sparse living space of his house. He crossed to the window, and drew aside the curtain to glance into the smallish backyard with its high, wooden fence- to the greenhouse. His eyes found the chained lock on the front, the simplest manifestation of technology that was still comforting despite the complex wires and motion detectors that made up the security system guarding what he loved.

He dropped the curtain, crossed the room again to the front door, and let himself onto the front porch. He glanced at the sky, and longed for spring.

The cold of the wood and concrete seeped through his bare feet as he left the porch and walked to the edge of the front sidewalk. He knelt and picked up the newspaper, early condensation clinging to its plastic sleeve, and tucked it under his arm. He glanced into the mailbox, smiled to see his latest seed catalog, and went back into his house, away from the winter.

He poured himself a glass of cranberry juice, warm, and settled into a chair at the kitchen table. He scrolled through the seed catalog, remembering the tulips he'd planted out front in the fall, knowing they would push through the earth only days after the cherry tree began to blossom, hopefully to weather any early spring frost. Nothing depressed him more than brave, early flowering plants succumbing to the last vestige of winter, clinging in desperation. It was the hand of the past, and the dream of the future.

He drained his glass, and refilled it. Warm cranberry juice reminded him, in some way, of wine. Alcohol was something he had given up in his early twenties. He'd flirted with mood-altering substances for only a brief period of time in his life, and had found that the horrible, overwhelming sense of guilt and shame that accompanied such experiences leeched any pleasure from it. He didn't want to be like his father.

He closed the seed catalog, setting it aside for later. He pulled the damp plastic sleeve from his paper, and unfolded the chill newsprint of the New York Times to the front page.

He read the headline as his fingers smoothed the creases from the page.

_Social Worker Held in Suspicion of Harlem Slayings_

The alliteration hissed through his mind, and he glanced at the article beneath.

The sense of panic, and fear, surged through him.

They had seen his work. And swept it aside.

Had he not left them words in blood? Truth, reason, meaning, drying there on the wall?

He shoved the paper away, and sat, staring ahead, for a long moment. Who was this social worker, and how could she be confused with him? What had he missed? What had they missed?

He stood, finally, and stepped out the back door. It was the only door he didn't lock.

The early morning dew still clinging to the grass was cold against his feet, soaking the hem of his pants as he crossed the yard to the greenhouse door. He drew the thin chain from around his neck, where the key hung, and unlocked it, gently wrapping the chain around the handle of the door before he stepped inside.

The air, coaxed by simple science into perpetual warmth, assailed him, and comforted him. He pressed the four digit code into the keypad to turn off the security system, and locking the door behind him, he paused and took a moment to admire his work. A box to his right boasted the most beautiful lilies he'd ever grown…and there were the morning glories, and the prolific hosta, with it's subtle, sweet aroma.

He walked past them all, and stretched his hand out to touch the vine that twined through the wooden lattice at the back of the greenhouse. It was the backdrop of a large box, eight by four, where he'd planted the flower that he loved most.

The rose.

**  
**


	12. Proliferation

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**Things sort of hit the proverbial fan after this chapter, so those of you that are fans of the casefile and have been slogging through the other stuff, the next number of pages deal with a lot of new material concerning the case. Also, I spent a couple of days browsing artwork to find just the right pieces for this scene, and I've posted some links at the bottom of the page for those that wish to see the works I'm talking about (and it'll help to look). It's some interesting surreal stuff I picked for this specific character. What Jozua says about Ross is pure conjecture on his behalf, btw.**

**Proliferation**

Goren found his partner already at their desk, and he imagined from the lack of steam rising from her oversized coffee cup that she had been there for some time. He offered her a smile by way of greeting, and hung his coat in his locker. He bypassed the coffee machine- the only effect caffeine seemed to have on him now was to give him a headache and remind him, after it wore off, how much he needed to sleep.

He dropped into his chair, looking curiously at Eames as she bid someone on the phone a half-hearted farewell and hung up. She looked at her partner and sighed deeply before affecting a smile.

"That was Valerie Eldridge, who now lives with her mother and eighteen month old daughter in Bristol , Tennessee . She wasn't particularly enthusiastic about making a trip back to New York ."

"I don't suppose the names of the latest vics rang a bell."

Eames snorted. "Of course not."

Goren folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, chewing the inside of his cheek for a moment in thought as he stared at the stacks of files on their desks. He'd worked enough cases in his time to know that violence and crime didn't have to make sense. The answers didn't have to be in a trail of paperwork, or a fiber… not even in a fingerprint.

"We're going to have to start over on this," he said. "We need to know what these kids were doing, with whom, twenty four hours a day… as far back as we have to go until we find a connection." He glanced at Eames, searching her face for any vestige of the doubt in his rationality that he had only recently – mostly - dispelled.

Instead she nodded, as though she'd decided on this course of action before he put a voice to it.

"So you don't think it's her." It wasn't a question.

Goren shook his head, and was about to attempt to define his reasoning, when the door to Ross' office snapped open behind his partner and the captain interrupted.

"Goren," he growled. "_In my office._"

Ross withdrew, leaving the door standing partly open, but thoroughly uninviting. Goren looked sharply at his partner, who, turning back from looking over her shoulder, shrugged and held her hands out in front of her.

"Don't look at me," she said. "I didn't even know he was here."

Goren sucked in a deep breath and levered himself out of his chair, shuffling reluctantly toward the captain's office. As stretched as he was already by maintaining the ability to function on the level his job required, he couldn't even bring himself to wonder, or care, what it was Ross was upset about this time.

He had, however, a good idea the moment he stepped through the door. Seated in the captain's red, leather-bound armchair in the corner, legs crossed and hands draped across the sides, was Jozua Everett. The lawyer glanced at his watch… a genuine Rolex by the looks of it… and cast Goren a look that implied easily that he thought eight AM was much too late for a detective to arrive at work.

Goren pushed the door shut behind him and glanced at Ross, who settled into his chair behind his desk. Goren refrained from taking a seat, choosing instead to hover beside the doorway.

"Goren," Ross repeated, a particular edge to his voice that Goren had heard a few times before around upstairs officials. It wasn't a stretch to realize that the lawyer in his office made him nervous, and he wondered why.

Ross picked up an ink pen from his desk, tapped it against a closed manila folder. "Would you like to explain what you were doing at Riker's last night…"

"…talking to my client without my permission?" Jozua interrupted, bringing Goren's gaze back to him. The lawyer's face was impassive, almost bored. Having met his twin brother only a few days before, the contrast was profound, and Goren found himself staring, curious if some similar element of eccentricity lay below Jozua Everett's carefully polished surface.

"Detective?" Ross prodded irritably.

Goren looked at him, suddenly terribly uncomfortable. What was he supposed to say? _Yes, I went to see her. No, I can't explain why I had to. _Saying that he hadn't gone there to talk to her about the case was not likely to appease anyone.

"She's in prison for a crime she didn't commit," he said simply, and watched Ross' face darken. The captain took a breath to speak, but Jozua interrupted him.

"Wonderful, detective. You'll make an excellent witness for the defense with this sort of conviction."

Goren frowned. "I hope… I don't intend for it to get that far," he said quietly, but felt that knot of doubt turn in his stomach.

The lawyer's brows came together over the silver frames of his glasses. His grey eyes, unlike his twin's, were stone. His lips parted as though he intended to speak, but he shot Ross a quick glance and seemed to think better of it. He reached to the floor beside him, taking the handle of his briefcase, and stood, facing Ross.

"Captain," he said. "I've an army of private investigators at my disposal should you need any additional help."

"I assure you that won't be necessary," Ross said, and again, Goren was surprised at the captain's careful tone.

Jozua cast Goren a lingering glance over his shoulder. "We'll see," he murmured, and looked at his watch. "Although I _almost_ hope I get to take on the prosecutor's office on this one." He flashed Ross a serpentine smile, and added with a note of vehemence Goren found at least mildly redeeming. "If only it wasn't my sister."

Ross' brow furrowed, and he glanced from Jozua to Goren, and back.

"Your _sister_?"

Goren clenched his teeth to keep from smiling at the completely blank look the lawyer gave the captain. Jozua faced him again over his shoulder.

"Is he serious?" he asked, and Goren, feeling the suppressed smile tug at one corner of his lips, forced himself to look at the wall.

"I see," he heard Jozua say. "Ross…You're on the right side of the desk then," he added cheerfully, and then he brushed past Goren and out the door, leaving it standing open behind him.

Goren thought about slipping out the door after him, but kept his feet planted to the floor, forcing himself to look at Ross. The captain's eyes were squeezed shut, three fingers massaging his forehead. Then he dropped his hand to his desk and eyed Goren, looking more tired than angry now.

"Captain, I…" Goren began, but he trailed off, realizing that he didn't want to apologize. If there had been any doubt at all in his mind about Juliana's innocence, then indeed, saying that to the captain in front of her defense attorney would have been foolish, and perhaps something he deserved to be chastised for.

Ross, for once, didn't seem inclined to question him. The captain waved a hand to ward off any further comment from the detective, his eyes shifting toward the open door. "You do whatever you have to do to keep that son of a bitch out of my office." He looked back, stern. "Ok ?"

The request was both ambiguous and rather direct. Goren nodded, and Ross pointed at the door.

"Get to work."

The invitation to escape the captain's presence was not one that needed to be repeated. Goren slipped out the door and closed it behind him, and only once he began to cross the room to his desk did he let out the breath that he hadn't realized he was holding. He had the sudden, overwhelming urge for a cigarette, and he hadn't smoked in years.

Eames turned at the sound of the captain's door closing, and her eyes followed him across the room. The expression on her face was sour as he resumed his seat across from her.

"What was _that_ about?" she asked.

Goren shifted, rolling his chair closer to the desk. He pushed a file aside, organizing his thoughts before he spoke.

"I went to Riker's last night," he said, glancing up to gauge her reaction. She raised both eyebrows and tilted her head just slightly, waiting for him to elaborate.

"I needed to talk to her again… after I saw those tapes," he went on, grateful for his partner's almost imperceptible nod of understanding. He waited for her to ask him what they talked about, but she didn't.

"So is that what the snake was doing in Ross' office?" she asked instead.

Goren glanced at the elevators as he wondered what the answer to that question really was.

"He made an effort to seem indignant," he said, looking back at his partner, who took an absent sip of her cold coffee and made a terrible face that almost made him laugh. "But I think he had some ulterior motive," he finished.

Eames reached across her desk and set the coffee cup on her partner's side, out of easy reach. "Ulterior motive?" she asked.

Goren opened his mouth to respond when the vibration of his cell phone shot through his leg. He shoved his hand into the pocket of his slacks and pulled it out. The outer screen showed a text message received, but he didn't recognize the number. He flipped the phone open curiously.

The message was simple.

"_200 E 90th Street. Imperative. –JVEverett_"

He stared at the unexpected message for a minute, thinking back to the weighted look the lawyer had given him, words having seemed just below the surface but stifled by Ross' presence.

Belatedly, it occurred to him to wonder how Jozua Everett had gotten his cell phone number.

He closed the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. He looked at his partner.

"Uh… clearly he talked to his sister," he said, finding that he wondered fiercely what she'd said to him, "and I think he wanted to see if I would uh… admit I thought she was innocent in front of the captain."

Eames frowned. "Did you?"

Goren nodded, and she raised an eyebrow.

"Ross probably loved that," she said, with what Goren thought was concern. "I'm surprised you came out with your head attached."

He smiled at her dry wit. "So am I, actually," he told her, shrugging. "Something about Jozua seems to put Ross off his game."

Eames made a face and reached for her coffee cup, her hand striking the empty air where it had been before she'd moved it out of her reach. She shook her head. "I don't blame him. That guy gives me the creeps. My old buddies from Vice wanna crucify him."

"Vice?" Goren asked, instantly curious.

Eames nodded. "He's in the pocket of at least one family," she said. "And he's rich enough to have political connections that make him untouchable."

Goren wondered if Juliana was aware of that. The thought that the mild-mannered social worker would knowingly allow a mob lawyer to represent her at her murder trial was unbelievable.

He nodded toward the phone in his pocket, then clarified. "That was him, just now. He sent me an address on the Upper East Side…said it's imperative."

Eames brows came together. "How…" she began.

"Don't know," Goren finished.

His partner pulled her computer across the table toward her. "What address?" she asked, and Goren recited it from memory. She tapped several keys, scrolled briefly, and shook her head.

"It's just an office building," she said, and tapped another key. "Damn. It's _his_ building. The law firm JVEverett and Associates is on the top floor." She looked at Goren. "He barely looks old enough to be out of law school," she said. "but he runs his own firm? And he owns the building?"

Goren shook his head, but remembered what Jozua's twin brother had said about him. _An obsessive workaholic._ He had to admit he was curious. River seemed to maintain no illusion that his brother was not as scarred by their family as he, but surely the manifestation of this was not success of such a nature. That thought, among others steeped in curiosity, drove him to rise from his chair.

"I'm going to go see what he wants," he told his partner. "You coming?"

Eames rose as well, rounding the table and retrieving her coffee cup."Count me out," she said over her shoulder on her way to the lounge.

-

He took the subway, got off at the station on East 86th Street , and walked the rest of the way. The buildings in the Upper East Side were older, shorter, more a montage of brick and stone, and the early morning sunlight in this part of town was pleasant, pale and wintry rather than reflected a thousand fold by glass and metal littering the skyscape. And it was quieter. At least compared to downtown Manhattan.

He passed a bank as he turned the corner from Park Avenue onto East 90th , and wasn't surprised to see the digital temperature gauge below the sign read: 28F/-2C. He clenched his gloved hands inside his pockets, but for the first time in weeks, he felt alive. The cold and the welcome exercise set the blood coursing through his veins and, despite his lack of sleep, lent a sharp clarity to his thoughts.

As he walked, he realized that he'd not had cause to come by just how old Juliana's brother actually were, but he had to agree with Eames. Jozua Everett barely looked old enough to be out of law school, much less running his own firm. The Upper East Side boasted some of the most expensive property in the city as well, but Goren couldn't remember anything about family money from his research into Juliana's past. Her apartment in Rochdale was a one bedroom not much bigger than a closet, sparsely furnished; either she was bizarrely minimalist for someone with a lot of money, or she simply didn't have it.

He found the building another two blocks down on the corner of 3rd Avenue, and as he took the stairs to the glass door he wondered what the industrious lawyer used the rest of the building for.

The first thing that struck him when he entered was the almost entirely monochromatic color scheme. White, delicately veined marble lined the floor and the lower three feet of the walls, which themselves were painted a wintry shade of whitish grey. The overstuffed, leather couch and chairs around the glass table against the back wall were white. The reception desk to his right seemed to grow from the floor, and Goren blinked at the woman behind it, who, in her bright red dress, seemed entirely out of place.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her eyes trailing along him as though, bereft of Italian silk and unadorned by a Rolex, he too did not belong here.

He frowned at the gorgeous bouquet of white lilies to her left, and told her he was there to see Jozua Everett, ignoring the dubious shift of her brow as she picked up the phone and dialed.

A short moment later, she set the phone aside, her demeanor adjusted. She flashed him a smile and stepped out from behind the desk, motioning him to follow. He did, shaking the creeping suspicious fog from his mind. White wasn't an uncommon color for flowers, after all. And flowers themselves were not uncommon things.

The receptionist showed him to an elevator, opened it for him, and told him to reach the penthouse, he had to exit on the eighth floor. There'd be another receptionist there, she said, that would show him to the private elevator he'd take the rest of the way up.

If he'd come here before he knew what he'd learned about Jozua's family, before he'd met his clearly avoidant twin brother, Goren thought that he would have found all this rather pretentious. Now, however, it seemed there might be something more to this particular lawyer making himself difficult to reach.

Being expected, he navigated the channels to the top floor of the building without incident, and found it much like the lobby, save for the addition of white carpet running along a long hallway and a slightly warmer ash wood trimming the walls. The contrast with the floor below, which was done in dark mahogany and oak, left him to imagine that this pallid schema was Jozua's design. His mind couldn't help, in this case, wondering what psychological implications a preoccupation with the color white might entail.

He wished it'd been any other color.

The receptionist informed that him Jozua was taking a short business call, and bade him wait a few moments. Goren took the opportunity to inspect the room's singular element of decoration: several pieces of art lining the wall along the hallway. There was an entire series of framed pencil sketches, that were obviously by the same artist. There was repeating image in them all: the outlined profile of a head, with no features. In each separate picture, however, this image was scored with dark, vicious black lines- where the eyes should have been in one, the mouth in the next, rising from the head in another.

"Interesting, isn't he?"

Goren leaned back from the piece he was studying- an oil canvas bearing a strange three-dimensional face, ladder leading to a gaping hole in the forehead- and glanced to his left.

He hadn't heard the lawyer approach, but saw that the door at the end of the hallway now stood open. Jozua, rather than looking at the painting, was looking at him.

Before he could answer, however, Jozua turned, and flicked two fingers behind him as he moved back down the hall. Goren glanced at the painting once more, interested in the fact that the lawyer, clearly fond of this particular artist, had not even offered to discuss his work. _I find this interesting_, he was saying, _but I'm not about to tell you why._

Goren raised an eyebrow and followed him to his office.

Jozua paused just outside the doorway and waved him inside, saying he had a few words for his secretary and would join him in a moment. Goren moved into the office, silently facilitating, and had the sudden impression that this pattern Jozua exhibited of forcing his visitor- invited though he was- to wait on him was something he likely repeated with everyone. It was an element of control.

He didn't mind, however, as it gave him another opportunity to appease his curiosity.

One plain aesthetic difference in his office was that one entire wall consisted of floor to ceiling windows, so that the skyscape of the Upper East Side framed his desk. The office itself seemed to be part of a larger suite, and glancing down a short hallway, Goren saw the corner of a bed behind a door that stood partially ajar.

Scanning one wall, Goren found himself unsurprised to see a framed Bachelor's degree from Yale. He did wonder if Juliana's younger brothers had been inspired by their sister to escape their family in education. River's words about he and Jozua owing much to their sister seemed to take on new emphasis.

Glancing over the bookshelves, his usual interest in what people read waned quickly, and he turned away, telling himself that all lawyers probably kept Latin dictionaries close at hand.

Facing the opposite wall, an incongruous splash of color- pink, brown, black- caught his eye, and an instant later he felt his lips part in awe as he recognized the painting hanging alone in a sea of white.

It was at this same moment that Jozua returned, and Goren managed to cast him only a quick glance before he turned back to the painting, pointing a finger at it.

"Is that…" he began, walking closer to it until he could see the delicate cracks in the paint that were indicative, usually, of age.

"Rene Magritte," Jozua said, and Goren didn't need a trained ear to hear the rather boyish note of pleasure in his voice.

He glanced at the corner of the painting, seeing the artist's signature. "The original," Goren said with a note of wonder.

Jozua's voice came from beside him again. "It's my fa… of course it's original. He called it _La Traversee Difficile._"

"Mmm.." Goren acknowledged. "The Difficult Passage." He shifted his gaze slightly at the lawyer, but found him staring at the painting. "You know," Goren went on, "Magritte never divulged any personal meaning behind his own art. He said it would appeal to people because of what they saw in it."

"Isn't that true of all art?" Jozua asked, sounding bored.

Goren nodded toward the painting. "You know what I see in this?" He didn't wait for Jozua to answer. "It's a ship on a stormy sea, but it's inside a small room: someone with walls around something not at peace. And here-"he pointed, "there's a bird on the table, but there's a disconnected hand holding it down: someone who can't escape the past…or at least part of it." He meant to go on, because there were several more similar elements to the piece, but when he glanced at Jozua, the look on the lawyer's face stopped him.

The stone façade and the hard eyes were gone, and Goren was looking at what was most similar between Jozua and his twin brother. His expression was raw, haunted. The moment Goren looked at him, he turned abruptly away.

"I didn't ask you here to talk about artwork, Detective," he said, walking away, but Goren could hear the way his easily authoritative voice had slipped, and he knew he'd unsettled him. He'd meant to, but could find no pleasure in the fact of his intuition.

Goren turned away from the painting, surprised not to see Jozua at first. He heard the clink of ice in a glass from another of the rooms lining the inner hallway, and a moment later the lawyer emerged again. He hovered there briefly, taking a sip of what looked like scotch, and smiled wryly, indicating the open doorway behind him with one hand.

"I don't suppose you drink on the job like your captain?"

Goren stared at him dumbly for a moment. It was something he'd suspected himself, although to what extent he was never quite sure, but wondering how the hell Jozua would know- assuming it wasn't just a lucky guess- shed some light on how he might make Ross nervous.

The defense attorney's sly smile offered no answer, but had most definitely changed the subject.

Goren realized his silence stretched suspiciously, and he shook his head.

Jozua shrugged and crossed the room again, this time taking a seat with the desk between them, and nodded toward a chair across from him. Goren made a point to check the time on the wall clock before he settled into the chair, not intending to appear as though he was making himself comfortable. The way Jozua's brows came together just briefly showed him that he hadn't missed either gesture.

"My sister seems to have been entirely mesmerized by you, detective," Jozua said then, taking a sip of his drink. Goren felt a stir of electricity course through him at the unexpected statement, and knew it registered on his face before he caught it.

That sly smile returned to Jozua's boyish face. "But of course she tends to have more faith in people than I do."

Goren leaned back in the chair, crossed his arms, and stared at him. The way Jozua spoke was not in a manner that invited conversation, so he decided to attempt it.

"What about her?" he asked. "Do you have faith in her?"

The question clearly surprised him, but he hid it by setting his drink aside and leaning back in his own chair, crossing his legs.

"You mean…" he mused slowly… "do I believe she's innocent?"

Goren only stared at him.

He smirked. "Does it matter?" When Goren didn't respond, Jozua shrugged, his hand finding his drink again and swirling the melting ice lazily as he stared into the glass.

"Of course I believe her," he said quietly, and fixed Goren with his eerie, pale eyes. "Now tell me why you do."

Goren opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again, realizing the lawyer was not looking for disjointed intuition, but for cold, solid facts. It was the one thing he didn't have.

Jozua nodded slowly, as if he read his mind. "This is why I won the Mendez case," he said. "Your brilliant intuition versus the beauty of circumstantial evidence."

Goren was rather surprised that there was no sarcastic inflection behind the word _brilliant_, and he wondered it perhaps the lawyer genuinely maintained some small bit of respect for him.

"The reason I asked you here…" he went on. "…is one I believe my brother tried to impress on you." The smile that flickered across his face was a mixture of fondness and something else. "He's made a point to bring certain things to my attention as well… and I find myself at a bothersome impasse."

Goren waited for him to explain, though he had an idea what he meant.

"The evidence against her is all circumstantial, and you know it," Jozua went on, and Goren nodded in agreement. "I could win this even with the unfortunate fingerprints, but it would by necessity turn into a character trial. The prosecution, I'm absolutely sure, would have my mother testify that my sister is a monster- they'd be stupid not to, frankly. The ideal response to that, of course, is to put Riv on the stand… and… well… you've met him. Even if I don't represent her, there's no way the three of us are staying out of it. River's right."

"That Juliana won't do it?"

Jozua inhaled deeply, nodded, and Goren saw what he thought was genuine worry in his expression. It reminded him very much of the conversation he'd had with his twin brother two days before.

Goren felt the throb of anxiety in his chest, exacerbated by his lack of sleep. He couldn't deny that there was something about this case – a heightened sense of responsibility- that had infected him, had become personal in way that he could not extricate himself from.

Juliana's brother tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair.

"Tell me what you need from me," he said, and the statement was poignantly imploring.

"Time," was all he could say.

Jozua frowned. Not the answer he'd wanted. "If too much time goes by I'll have to hire a copycat," he said, his tone disturbingly deadpan. "I am unethical, after all."

Goren thought there was more desperation in her brother's words than truth. "Money can't fix everything," he told him softly, realizing that at some point during this visit the scorn he'd had for this man had been replaced by sympathy.

"I can't deal with that thought," Jozua responded, impulsively it seemed, because he immediately looked down, drained his ten AM scotch, and stood.

"I'm due in court in under an hour," he said, glancing at his watch. He opened his briefcase against his desk, sorting papers into it, and added without looking up: "I can have my service drive you wherever you need to go."

The idea of taking anything from Jozua was unappealing in a way Goren found difficult to articulate to himself. "Um…No," he said, then added a hurried "Thanks anyway."

Jozua nodded, then looked up, meeting his eyes. "Tempus fugit, Detective," he said in a low voice.

-

**about the artwork mentioned**

**In mind for the black and white pencil sketches in the hallway are those by Ukranian artist Pisarev Gennadiy, many of which can be found by visiting this site: www. amsterdam-artgallery. com/artist/pisarevgennadiy.html . The piece with the ladder is called "Abandoned."**

**I tried to post a link to a picture of the Magritte piece but it won't work. Just check him out on Wikipedia- "The Difficult Passage" is on the right just over halfway down the page. There's a lot of good artwork with this chapter on the version that's on my webpage, which you can link to from my fanfiction page. **

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**

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	13. Proliferation Part II

**Tuesday, January 5th, 2008, 5:20 P.M.**

**Jamaica, Queens**

**Detectives Goren and Eames**

Eames pulled the SUV alongside the curb behind two squad cars, their blue-white lights flashing in the darkening winter twilight. An ambulance, back doors standing open, waited in front of the house, the paramedics standing idly behind it.

Goren opened the door and stepped out as his partner turned of the ignition. He hadn't been able to connect to any sense of vindication or relief since Ross had quietly told them a call had come in from the 106th. Someone else was dead, and there were roses, and dirt.

He shut the door, waiting for Eames to circle the SUV and join him. She hadn't said anything since they'd left One PP. Not: "_Well, you were right" _Not: "_They'll have to let her out of Riker's now, won't they?"_ His partner knew him better than that.

He looked down at her as she drew alongside him, pausing there to stare ahead at the house. He saw the consternation, the frustration creasing her brow, and he thought about how long it had been since sorrow had become buried in other expressions- how long it had been since either of them had much left to expend. Was humanity lost, or guarded more closely? Or a mixture of both?

She glanced up at him, met his eyes. He saw her shoulders shift as she inhaled a deep breath, then she looked away, skirting the grass as she made her way to the paved driveway. He followed her, the floodlights that had been set up in the front yard growing in relative brilliance as the sun fell.

The front door of the two story home stood open, the interior lights projecting the shadow of the man who stood there, badge clipped to his lapel. His eyes followed the two other detectives up the front walk, arms folded across his chest, seeming impatient to escape.

Eames, walking before him, paused in the doorway, blocking his way. Vaguely, he heard the man introduce himself to his partner… Christian Lynn. He looked over Eames' shoulder, into the house, but saw nothing beyond an oriental rug lying before a staircase, an empty doorway, and a bookshelf. Without saying a word, Eames cast him a quick glance and stepped out of his way, a barely perceptible nod of her head telling him to go on, while she talked to Lynn.

He flattened himself against the doorframe and slipped past the two of them. Beyond the staircase lay an open room, bearing an unusual amalgamation of age and modernity. An enormous plasma screen TV stood vigil over a worn, brownish sofa, its padding visible along the arms where cat claws had torn at it. Eyes trailing over several bookcases, he saw a porcelain bust of Elvis, a framed portrait of Marilyn Monroe, and an ancient doll of some indistinct nature still inside it's dust-coated box, all of which were sharing the space on the shelves with copious DVDs, video games. Goren frowned at a stuffed likeness of Batman, lying face down on the floor in front of the couch. The ages of these latest victims was not something Ross had told them.

He circled the staircase, moving toward sound- footsteps against linoleum, the whine of spring hinges as a door opened, then clicked softly closed again. He found himself in the empty kitchen, and glancing through the screen door, saw three CSU techs, combing a secluded back yard beneath the illumination of floodlights.

"All the action's upstairs," he heard Eames say from behind him, and he could tell from the sound of her voice that what the other detective had told her was grim.

He looked at her, and her face confirmed it.

"Lynn's with narcotics," she said. "He and his partner have been sitting on the house for almost a month. They made a scheduled move on him this morning… found all four of them already dead. They had a car across the street all night after Carmichael came home from work Monday."

Goren glanced over his shoulder at the CSU techs in the back yard, surrounded as it was by a high, wooden privacy fence and the tangled branches of trees. When he looked back to his partner, she shook her head.

"Right under their noses," she said bitterly.

Goren said nothing, but stepped past her and made his way toward the stairs. He was within two steps of the second floor, when a sudden, dark blur shot around the corner and past his leg, accompanied from behind by a thump, and a vicious curse. He snapped his head around, and saw his partner stooping behind him. She straightened, a brown cat in her hands.

"Got it," she called to someone over Goren's shoulder, and a sour-faced CSU tech shoved past him, took the animal from his partner with a muttered thanks, and descended toward the front door.

Goren sucked in a breath to still the sudden tingling of his nerves, which of late had been much less a matter of his control. He took the remaining stairs, and turned in the direction the cat had come, where a short hallway past an empty bathroom brought them to a child's room.

From beside him, Goren heard the thin snap of plastic as Eames pulled on a pair of gloves, and he followed suit.

A Star Wars comforter, half of the caricature image of R2-D2 stained dark red, was drawn up around the boy, his neck sliced neatly across the jugular. Eames rounded the bed, opposite her partner, and touched her gloved fingers to the boy's face.

"The boy can't be more than eight or nine," she said softly.

Goren nodded, frowning, his attention caught by the slight movement of the boy's head when Eames touched him. He leaned closer, ignoring the vacant eyes, and slid two fingers between the boy's lips, prying the stiffened jaw the rest of the way open. When he drew his hand back, he brought with it the crumpled, torn petal of a white rose.

"What do you think he meant here?" he asked, looking at Eames. She glanced at the petal, then peered into the boy's mouth.

"I don't know," she said, "but his mouth is full of them." She drew another out and looked at it with distaste. "The rose he left at the other scene," she mused, looking back at Goren, "was supposed to represent innocence."

Goren nodded again, and replaced the petal for the moment. "The detective you talked to said _all_ four of them… the killer left no one alive?"

Eames shook her head, turning away from the body and scanning the dresser beside the bed. "Nothing left worth saving?" she muttered, reading Goren's mind, and she opened a drawer, sifting through it. Goren saw the boy's backpack, half hidden beneath a pile of dirty clothes. He shoved the laundry aside with his foot, kneeling beside the bag, gloved fingers unzipping it.

"Bobby… look at this." Eames voice stopped him, and he glanced at her over his shoulder. She was holding up a dark blue, hardback book bearing the words "physician's desk reference," in gold lettering. Even from his vantage point on the floor, Goren could see the multicolored strips of paper marking various places among the pages.

"Is this the kind of stuff boys his age read?" she asked wryly.

Goren raised an eyebrow and turned back to the book bag. He pulled it open, glancing through the contents. He drew out a math book, reading what was stamped on the inside cover. _JHS 008 Richard S. Grossley. _It was the local junior high school. Beneath that was scrawled a name. _Kieran Carmichael._ He set the book aside, and looking through the rest of that section found only pens, and a plastic bag containing the molding remnants of an apple that had probably been there since before winter break. He unzipped another section of the bag, hearing his partner behind him likewise rifling through the contents of the dresser drawers.

The bag appeared otherwise empty, but he pushed his hand to the bottom, not sure what he was looking for. An explanation? For evidence of this child's crime? When his fingers met the slippery surface of something plastic, he drew it out. It was a zip lock bag, wrapped around itself into an ambiguous cylinder. With a flick of his wrist, it unrolled. He held it up to his eyes briefly, frowning, then peeled it open and dumped the contents into his hand.

With one finger, he turned over several pills: blue ones, thick white ones, several nondescript, powder filled capsules.

"Eames," he said. "I think I found what he was using that desk reference for." He stood, walked to her, and held out his hand, showing her the motley assortment.

She shook her head. "Stealing drugs from dad?"

Goren shook his head, and held the pills out until she lifted her hand. He spilled them into her palm, and picked up the physician's desk reference. He flipped through several of the marked pages until he found the one he was looking for, and then plucked one of the pills from Eames' hand and laid it beside one of the larger, glossy images labeled "Alprazolam."

"Xanax?" Eames said. Then she saw it. She handed the other pills back to her partner, then picked the blue one up and looked more closely at it. Still holding it in her hand, she reached into the drawer to her right and drew out a bottle of Aleve. She twisted off the cap with her wrist and spilled several of the pills onto the open book. They were blue, roughly the same shape. They would have been bigger, though, than the pill in her hand, if someone hadn't filed it down and carved it into a fine approximation of the image in the book.

"There you are."

They both turned their heads toward the voice, coming from the doorway to their left. The detective from downstairs, Lynn, glanced quickly at the body on the bed and then back to them. "This was their youngest," he said. "Boy was ten. Sixth grade."

"And a regular little entrepreneur, looks like," Goren heard Eames say, and he felt her pull the zip lock back out of his hand. He glanced at her as she dumped the pills back in, holding it aloft for the other detective to see.

"These are probably all over-the-counters, filed up to look like 'scripts. Found it in his book bag."

Lynn squinted at the PDR on the desk, heaved a sigh, and shook his head. He motioned the two detectives from the room, leading them toward another open doorway across the hall.

"We knew Brendan.. the older boy… was dealing," he said. "But he was taking stuff straight from his father. Guess the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree."

"Some of them don't," Eames said, following him into the room then, and although she didn't look at him when she said it, Goren knew the comment was meant for his sake, and he felt one corner of his lips twitch in an involuntary half-smile.

It faded quickly when he saw the body.

Eames held her wrist up to cover her mouth and turned away. There was an unmistakable, pungent scent of urine.

Something different had happened here. Either the killer had entered to find the boy not asleep as he had expected, or had woken him, for Brendan Carmichael lay face down on the floor. One hand still held the edge of the curtain, which he must have held as he fell, for the rod and the rest of the fabric lay crumpled in front of him. The window, facing the back of the house, stood partially open, as though the boy's last thought had been to climb through it. Into empty space.

Eames, facing the other direction, touched Goren's arm, and he looked where she pointed. Near the door was what was left of a lamp, shade askew, cord bunched beneath it. There was a book… a heavy dictionary... laying open, pages crumpled against the carpet.

"This one fought back," she said. "Good for him."

Goren made a noise somewhere in the back of his throat. _Lot of good it did him_, he thought to himself. He turned back to the body, slipping plastic covers from his pockets over his shoes before approaching it. CSU was finished processing the house, but the carpet was supersaturated with blood, still glistening in places.

He knelt and placed one hand against the dead boy's forehead.

"Careful," Lynn's voice piped suddenly from the other side of the bed, and Goren turned his head slowly to look at the other detective, raising an eyebrow.

Lynn cleared his throat and nodded toward the body. "It's just that…well… whoever killed him damn near cut his head off."

Goren maneuvered the boy's head carefully, but even forewarned, he felt a sick chill travel along his spine at the unnatural ease with which it moved. Indeed, the killer's weapon had severed both the jugular and a good portion of the muscles beneath the jaw in a wide, deep arc- almost to the spine.

He lay Brendan Carmichael's parchment-white cheek against the floor gently, and probed the boy's mouth as he had that of his brother. He sensed his partner kneeling beside him, and he held another crumpled white petal out toward her.

She merely frowned at it, but Lynn, hand pressed against the bed between them for balance, leaned over.

"In his _mouth_?" he asked.

Goren looked at Eames, then back to Detective Lynn.

"This isn't why you called us?" his partner voiced his thought.

Lynn straightened, shook his head, and jerked a thumb roughly toward the other end of the hall. "No. There's more."

Goren opened his mouth to ask what he meant, when Eames' voice drew his attention.

"Jesus…" she'd mumbled, the movement of her hand catching his gaze. Her fingers slid delicately along the back of the boy's head, and a clump of dark hair came away in her hand. She looked at her partner, and he knew the same scenario was a sharp relief in both their minds. A boy, startled from bed by a killer, trying to fight back but giving in to fear. Struggling for a desperate two story escape from the window, the killer grabbing him by the hair, jerking his head back so forcefully he'd pulled almost a handful of his hair out, exposing the arch of his neck…

"So much for mercy," Eames whispered.

Goren glanced at her, his eyes absently studying her face as he thought about her words. Something about Jhosa Moore's death tugged at him, but he wasn't ready to articulate it.

He stood, and looking at Lynn, waved a hand to offer the detective the chance to lead them on.

"What is it, Bobby?" Eames asked from his shoulder as she stood beside him.

He shook his head, but looked again at the pieces of the broken lamp as he passed it.

As they followed Lynn to the other end of the hall, Goren's eyes trailed along the wall. Family photos lined it. Two boys, freshly washed and smiling, their faces betraying nothing of the reality that would eventually consume them. It was a macabre timeline leading to this day, from infancy to the faces he'd just seen frozen in death. He felt sadness, seeping into that comfortable, empty void he'd grown accustomed to, and he wasn't sure, at this stage, what that might mean.

The master bedroom lay at the end of the hallway, the door blocked by the frame of another detective, speaking quietly into a cell phone. As he saw the others approach, he disengaged and slid the phone into the inside pocket of his suit.

"This is Detective Chase," Lynn said, "my partner."

The other detective didn't offer his hand, but nodded grimly. "So is this your guy or not?" he asked brusquely.

"Looks that way," Goren said, stepping closer to the other detective, who moved reluctantly back from the doorway.

His first thought on entering the room, however, was that perhaps it wasn't.

An immediate, horrible sensation washed through him as Jozua Everett's snide words about hiring a copycat- words he'd not taken seriously- flashed across his consciousness.

The woman was crouched in the corner, head bowed over her bare knees, arms dangling limply where in life they'd likely covered her head in her last moments. Blood matted her blonde hair around a single bullet wound, and had run in a thick, dark rivulet down her forehead. There was a rose, once white but stained red now, lying at her feet.

The man lay on his side, half in the bathroom, the structure of the face that was so like that of his children marred by the bullet that had torn through his cheek. Another had pierced his chest, blood turning his blue mechanic's shirt a morose navy. This time, it took no close analysis to see that his mouth was filled with dirt, as Jhosa's had been. It sprinkled the floor beside his lips.

Goren turned away and looked at Eames, and found that she was already looking at him. She opened her mouth to speak, but Detective Chase, circling the room to stand near the body of the man, interrupted her.

"We put in over a year on this son of a bitch," he said, giving the body a not so gentle nudge with his foot, causing more of the dirt to fall from his lips. "And some psycho gets to him first."

Goren stared at the body, the bullet wound, at a loss for words for a moment. He was remembering the final CSU report from the Moore's apartment- the notation about a bullet removed from the baseboard of the living room wall. He'd dismissed it at first, but now it crawled from the recesses of context, demanding attention.

Eames cleared her throat, scattering his thoughts.

"You said there was something else?" she changed the subject. "Some other reason you called us?"

Before his partner could speak again, Lynn stepped around Chase and pushed the bathroom door wider, pointing at something out of their line of sight.

Goren moved around the body, and into the bathroom. He stopped when he saw the words on the mirror, but shifted farther in to make room for his partner as he read.

This time, the message was in English, but the medium was the same.

Eames read the words aloud, unnecessarily.

"_We tear aside the vines, so that the roses may feel the absence of darkness._"

Goren stared not at the words themselves, but at the reflection behind them. His. His partner's.

It turned his blood to ice.

-

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	14. Tangled In The Vines

Thursday, January 7th, 2007, 10:53 A.M.

M.C.S. – 1 Police Plaza

Goren, Eames, Ross

Alex crossed the eleventh floor bullpen on her way to the lounge, and thought about the premise behind the Major Case Squad. Most law city law enforcement agencies had something similar- some elite force within which they gathered the best detectives. The personalities most suited to solving high profile cases quickly. She had no illusions about how authority worked…especially not after so many years on the job. Everyone answered to someone, and criticism was something a person wanted power over. Detectives wanted beat cops that took their jobs seriously. Captains wanted detectives that didn't sleep at night so cases got solved. The chief of detectives wanted a captain that delved for talent and picked at flaws, so that he could look _his _boss in the face and say he was doing everything in his power to keep ugliness off the front page. So everyone looked good.

Society, however, seemed insistent on claiming its own laws over physics. The closer to the bottom one got, the more pounds of pressure responsibility asserted.

She pulled open the door to the lounge, and that thought like a wave, mixed with sympathy. She knew what she was feeling was not for herself, but for her partner. What was it about her that made her different from him? They harbored duty… a personal sense of justice… in a different place. When she thought of herself, she imagined that her family- her father- had inspired her to do what she did. Her father had been a model for her. He'd been a cop. As a girl, she'd not questioned that source of inspiration. He was her father. But now, as an adult…as an adult that had seen so many variations in humanity… she had to wonder what made her partner gravitate toward the profession that had seemed so natural to her. He'd had no one. Was there something about him… some deep core that demanded expression?

Who were the detectives that let the captains and the chiefs lay the pressure on their heads?

Noble?

She pulled a paper cup from the top of the stack, setting it on the counter and reflexively drew another one. Her hand froze, fingers around it, considering replacing it, because she knew he wasn't drinking coffee lately. She blew a half-frustrated sigh through her lips instead, and snatched the coffee pot from its resting place, filling both cups. She'd rather it sat in front of him and grew cold, then let him think he wasn't on her mind.

She mixed several packets of sugar into her cup, then shoved a handful of them into her pocket. Arranging the cups into one practiced hand, she cast a quick glance through the window. As if on cue, the leaden clouds spit a harsh tongue of lightening across the horizon, and she felt the electric, booming discharge shiver through her. It was a strange time of year for a storm like this.

She turned away, making her way across the lounge once more. Shouldering through the door, she thought about the last two days. The Carmichael house had sent her partner into one of his strange, pseudo-silent states that set her nerves on edge waiting for that moment of clarification. It bothered her, too, that he had not said a word about _her_. He'd buried himself in the forensic reports, from the Carmichael house and from the Moore's…he'd sat at their desk and not spoken... he'd stared at photos from crime scenes. Yesterday, they'd spoken to the D.A. together about the new evidence… their shared confidence that the person who had killed the Carmichaels was the same that had killed the others- the crimes Juliana was in jail for. But to his partner, Goren had not mentioned Juliana.

Alex knew he was struggling with a sense of responsibility, a need for atonement, that didn't correspond in a way that could rest easily for a detective. She passed one cup into her other hand and took a sip, grimacing at a scalded tongue, and wondered what _did_ rest easily with him.

She took in the scene beyond the glass face of the room as she approached: her partner slumped over several typed pages, his long, slender fingers stroking the edges of a photograph. Ross crouched on a stool across from the table, pretending to examine the contents of a manila folder. His eyes shifted restlessly toward the bullpen, and when he saw her approaching, he straightened, and she saw a sigh heave through his shoulders.

Eames pulled the door open with the two fingers that weren't clutching her coffee, and met her partner's gaze with a lopsided smile as she set the cup she'd brought him on the table. She saw his brow furrow as he looked at, but then he cast her another glance and pulled it across the table toward him. It was hard to read his eyes these days.

She settled into the chair she'd left moments before, the metal still warm from the heat of her body, and took a sip of her coffee.

"Ok…" she said, looking at Goren, then at Ross. "Where were we?"

Goren looked at the table, and Ross looked between the two of them. He stretched his arm toward the table, dropping the stapled pages he'd been holding.

"Talk to me about the bullet in the baseboard," he said, sounding tired.

Before Eames could respond, Goren sucked in a breath and shoved several photographs aside. He jerked one from beneath a stack, pulled it toward himself and stared at it for a moment, then pulled another toward him from the edge of the table.

"The bullet in the baseboard," he repeated, his voice monotone, musing, his finger tapping the photograph from the Moore's apartment. He glanced at Eames, and held his hand out, and she knew why.

She set her coffee aside and took up the pages Ross had just discarded.

"Ballistics," she said. "The bullet found in the baseboard of the Moore's apartment was from the same gun that killed Elliot and Suzanne Carmichael."

Ross shrugged. "So…" he began, then paused. "Wait..."

Eames' partner shifted, straightening, dropping his hands against the table.

"But why's the bullet in the wall, instead of in Jhosa Moore's head?" he quipped sharply. Eames flinched at the strained way his impatience with Ross manifested itself. She wasn't sure she could blame him, but she couldn't quell her protective instinct, and she eyed him sharply.

"That's not the most interesting thing about this," she said, staring at Goren until he sensed her gaze and looked back. She let her eyes speak to him.

He glanced from her to Ross, then grabbed the cup of coffee Eames had brought him. It must have been lukewarm by then, because he drained it easily. Then he took the ballistics report out of Eames' hand.

He flipped a page, creasing the paper over the staple. One finger traced a paragraph worth of words.

"More interesting than matching bullets," he said, "are fingerprints." Eames saw his dark eyes focus sharply on Ross, and wasn't sure where the irony in his tone pointed. Goren slapped the page down on the table and turned it around.

"It's a message," her partner said.

Eames glanced at him, then at Ross.

Ross glanced at her.

She sighed, flashed a finger at the page. "Fingerprints on the gun found at the scene," she told him.

"Gun?" Ross asked in a strained, disbelieving tone. "You're telling me the killer left the gun at the scene."

Goren looked sharply up at him. "Yes. On purpose."

"Carl Eldridge," Eames interrupted, holding her hand out to Ross, placating. "His prints are on the gun. They found it in Elliot Carmichael's hand when they arrived on the scene."

Ross stared at her for a moment, silent, then his eyes focused blankly on the table before jumping sharply back.

"Carl Eldridge. Who died almost two years ago? What's it doing in the vic's hand?"

Eames' gaze shifted briefly to her left, meeting her partner's as he glanced at her. There was a question in this that was recondite… the sort of question that was answered only with speculation. It was something Robert Goren had a talent for.

"I think it's one of two things… or…both." He picked up the page with the ballistics report and looked at it for a moment. When he spoke again, it was to the paper. "There is the question of why he didn't use it at the Moore's house. If he took it from the Eldridge's…he held onto it for more than a year, making sure the fingerprints weren't smudged." He looked at Ross now. "I don't think he just… needed a gun. I think he's trying to say something… perhaps about… cycles…" Goren trailed off, and Eames saw him begin to chew the inside of his cheek, his eyes focused distantly. It was the particular look he adopted when his mind was only just beginning to understand something abstract.

"Cycles," Ross repeated dubiously. "You mean… violence perpetuates itself?"

Goren, still distant, nodded slowly. He said nothing for a moment, then dropped the sheaf of pages back to the table and sat back in his chair. "We arrested the wrong person for his actions," he folded his arms, but Eames could hear no tone in his voice. "He's making damn sure we understand now." He reached back to the table, shoving aside several pieces of paper, knocking over his empty coffee cup, and found the photograph of the mirror in the Carmichael's bathroom.

"This," he said, turning it for Ross to see, "is in English." He smirked darkly.

Eames picked up the picture, drawing it to herself and turning it around. She stared at it for a moment. "He wants us to know that all three of the murders were his. Leaving the gun at this scene does that. It's got Carl's fingerprints, it puts the gun at the Moore's house, and it killed the Carmichaels. Or…two of them."

Goren nodded, but held a hand out. "That's not all though. I think he wants us to know why he's doing it. The mirror. He says_we_. "_We_ tear aside the vines so that the roses may feel the absence of darkness." Why'd he write it on a mirror?"

"So we'd see our reflections behind the words," Eames said. "He's a vigilante. He thinks what he's doing is right."

Goren looked at her, his head tilted just slightly as he seemed to consider that. "Maybe not right… but necessary. I see this man as… hovering somewhere between… reasoning and… irrational rage. I wouldn't be surprised if over time he's developed this elaborate pretext to… justify something that began…" He faltered, opening his black binder and extracting a photograph. It was Jhosa Moore, lying bound on the floor of his Harlem apartment. He looked at Eames then, and pointed his hand at her side of the table, and the scattered papers there. Instinctively, she knew what he wanted, and she dug through the mess and found one of several photos of Brendan Carmichael's room. One with the body of a twelve year old boy.

He nodded, and took it from her, but pointed again. "The uh…" he began, and she handed him a photo of the broken lamp.

Goren placed them side by side, and Ross leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the gruesome upside down photos.

"Rage," Goren said simply. "Maybe it's just… a product of modern statistics that Juliana happened to fit my profile, but… the killer is someone with an abusive past. Although now, I think it's possible to say there was an element of physical abuse in our killer's childhood." Now, Goren traced the outline of Jhosa Moore's shattered face. "I think our killer endured years of never being able to fight back. He's suppressed a lifetime of indignation, anger… and being… defied… triggers that well. The one that doesn't go away," he added softly.

Eames watched Ross' reaction to Goren's words. The captain's green eyes actually seemed to soften after a moment, as though only just realizing that her partner was a man with his own past.

"So you're saying," Ross asked slowly, folding his arms, "that whoever killed Jhosa Moore tortured him because he fought back."

"It makes sense doesn't it?" Eames interrupted, bringing Goren's gaze sharply to her. She cast him a quick sideways glance, and went on. "The blue cord used to bind Jhosa…Sarah Moore identified that as coming from their apartment. The bullet found at the scene was in the baseboard… like Jhosa knocked it out of the killer's hand and it discharged when it hit the floor."

Goren was nodding, and took over. "The autopsy showed, the blow to Jhosa Moore's face crushed his zygomatic arch, shattered his jaw. The killer hit him hard…hard enough to knock him out. But there were defensive wounds on his hands, his arms. The kitchen counter faces the doorway…"

Eames picked up the scenario eagerly. "The killer follows Jhosa home, surprises him with the gun in the doorway. Jhosa fights back… knocks the gun out of his hand. Triggers that… rage. The killer grabs the first weapon he sees. A knife. On the counter. Puts Jhosa off his guard, knocks him out… ties him up…"

"…wants him to hurt," Goren went on. "He's planned this night for… who knows how long. It's been over a year since the last murder. I think what proves that he didn't intend to kill Jhosa that way is that he…"

"Took the murder weapon with him," Ross finished, and sat back on the stool, holding his hands out beside him in a gesture that conveyed acceptance. "So the fact that Juliana Everett's fingerprints ended up on this particular knife…"

Eames sucked in a breath, and Goren shook his head, sitting back in his own chair. "It's either incredibly bad luck, or it's the clue we need to find him," he said. He opened his mouth to say something else, when Eames saw his leg twitch, and he shoved his hand into the pocket of his pants as he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall behind Ross. Withdrawing his cell phone, he flipped it open, read something, and closed his eyes briefly. Then he snapped it shut and pushed it back into his pocket.

Eames looked at him, searching his face quizzically. Since his mother had died, he'd had no contact at all, that she knew of, with his brother, and working as closely as she did with him, she generally had an idea who might be sending him text messages. Something, however, kept her from asking.

Ross, likewise, regarded him for a moment, and seemed to come to a similar conclusion. "So… where are we with this then?" he asked. "Any closer to narrowing things down?"

Goren looked at the table. "A lot closer than before," he murmured quietly.

Ross glanced at Eames. "You think this girl might know more than she thinks she knows ?"

"Juliana?" Eames asked. "I personally think the world's small enough for simple bad luck. But… I can't speak for my partner." She shrugged, and glanced at Goren. She truly didn't know what he thought.

He still looked at the table, his eyes unfocused, and was silent for a moment. Eames had the impression then that he wasn't listening to them. She took a breath to put the question to him directly, when the sharp, startling sound of knuckles rapping against glass commanded her attention. She felt Goren and Ross turn their heads with her, seeing on the other side of the glass-fronted conference room the tan face of Detective John Smith. He didn't attempt to enter the room, but held two fingers over his head like stubby antennae and nodded pointedly toward the television set behind Ross. He flashed his hand with all five fingers splayed, and then he was gone.

Eames watched him go curiously, then turned back to Ross, who met her eyes as though he awaited her shared confusion. Then she looked to her partner, and found him already moving. He skirted the table, pressing the power button on the television set. Immediately, the familiar voices of CNN's afternoon show filled the room, but before Eames could discern what they were discussing, Goren jabbed another button until the blocky green number in the right corner of the screen read "5."

Eames perception took in several things then. First, were the familiar faces on the screen. The dark hair, the ghost grey eyes filled with some wild light as he spoke into the microphones pressed toward him. "_We're simply glad the NYPD's gotten the wake-up call they needed," _he was saying, and Eames felt the hair along her skin bristle. This was why she'd told Goren to "count her out," when he'd gone to see this man. Because Jozua Everett wasn't the sort of man to add "we're sorry it came in the form of two dead kids." She wondered, as her eyes shifted to another familiar, pale and freckled face, whether Juliana Everett felt the same way about her brother. She seemed determined to disappear in his wake, her head bowed behind his elegantly suited shoulder. Eames could, however, see the creases along her brow, the evident unhappiness in her eyes. She didn't look at him. She didn't look at anyone.

Eames saw her partner back away from the television slowly, groping behind him for his chair. When he found it, he sank into it heavily, never taking his eyes from the screen. She watched his hand scrape the table absently, clinging to the upended paper coffee cup.

"_There was never any doubt in my mind that my sister would be cleared of these charges."_ Jozua was saying. "_She's devoted her life to helping others. This entire fiasco was ludicrous." _

Eames glanced at Ross, but found him enthralled by the scene playing before him. She looked back to the set in time to see several microphones shoved toward Juliana. There was a cacophony of voices, a lilting variety of questions. She made out only a few. _How do you feel? Do you have anything to say to the NYPD?_

Eames found herself holding her breath, waiting for the dark eyed woman on the television screen to say something to her. To express some emotion. Anger. Resentment. Perhaps it would be merited.

Instead, Juliana's eyes remained averted from the cameras, a mixture of, Eames thought, shy and angry. She responded to the questions posed to her by staring at the concrete of the courthouse steps, and at the persistence of the media, she walked away from her brother, beyond the view of the lens. The TV camera shifted, focusing on her departing frame, then moved to capture Jozua as he quickly abandoned that afternoon limelight and followed her, not once, she noticed with curiosity, glancing back to the cameras.

Eames looked from the television, to her partner. He sat much as he had fallen into his chair, but the muscles of his shoulders were taut, his back stiff. The arm that stretched across the table ended in a hand curled tightly around what had been, once, a paper coffee cup.

-


	15. Tangled In The Vines Part II

**-Chapter 15- **

**Thursday, Jan 7th, 2008 – 2:30 PM**

**Richard S. Grossley Jr. High School**

**Queens, New York**

**Detectives Eames and Goren**

The _swish - click_ of the windshield wipers, rhythmically scattering the rain, and the thick drone of the heater had been the only sounds since they'd left One Police Plaza. Eames took her foot off the gas pedal and let the SUV decelerate beneath the flashing red lights of a sign that warned of the approaching school zone. She glanced warily at the cars parked alongside the street, conscious of the way the rain distorted her perception of distance, and lamented, not for the first time, the overlarge vehicle that forced her to drive over the center line on narrow neighborhood roads like this one.

She came to a stop before the outstretched hand of a crossing guard, whistle wedged between his lips as he enticed a group of waiting children into action with a flick of his wrist. While they splashed across the street in various degrees of concern for the downpour, Eames glanced at her partner.

His seat pushed back as far it could be to accommodate his tall frame, Goren leaned against the headrest, his face turned away from her. His eyes were open, but what he saw, she couldn't say. The street, the rain… or something farther away.

There had been a number of things she'd wanted to say to him after she'd observed his reaction to that scene on the television back at One PP. Ross' presence had stalled her, and although the captain seemed to easily sense the uncomfortable pall that had quickly settled over the room, he didn't choose that moment to leave them. Instead, he'd flipped the switch on the television without comment and picked up the conversation about the case where they'd left it. Although Eames had never perceived Ross to be exactly subtle, she knew that both she and her partner had not missed the way the moment served as a reminder. However unfortunate their mistake had been, the reality was that eight murders remained unsolved, and a killer had just turned the clock forward on them.

In a way, it was this fact- the fact that they had to move on, and quickly- coupled with the recent intensity of worry she'd felt for her partner, that stirred a sense of unease in her. She'd wondered what was going through his mind at that moment, seeing Juliana on camera; whatever it was, it carried behind it some force. That much would have been easy to read in him, even if he hadn't crushed that cup in his hand.

_Guilt_, Eames thought to herself as she edged the SUV over the now abandoned crosswalk. She wondered then if the gift of such radical intelligence as he possessed came with more than just a propensity to brood. Certainly he was competitive- not only in the sense of knowing more than those around him, but in knowing _enough_. Enough that he was in control of the vast majority of situations. Working against him, now, was that Robert Goren had always been so good at it. He was not accustomed to losing, in whatever guise it presented itself. She remembered the way Ross had described his behavior later, after the ordeal of her kidnapping- the way her partner had come unglued. Then, being outsmarted came with more than just a disconnected, intangible sense of consequence. That time, the consequence was her. Her death. She remembered the way he'd acted when he'd come to see her at the hospital. Distant, rueful. He'd apologized, more than once, and she'd known he was apologizing for not seeing what was in front of him. For not being one step ahead, as was his wont, and for being distracted by something personal, something from his past. Declan Gage. His daughter.

She saw that in him now, growing in the silence as they both went through the familiar, reductive motions of working the case. Somewhere in all this, Eames realized he'd let himself get too close. She'd thought at first that it was the nature of the crimes themselves… the way they bonded to all that raw bitterness and anger unresolved after his mother's death. That was still a part of it, she was sure. But seeing the way the video feed of the courthouse steps had affected him- of Juliana Everett fleeing those media sycophants - she realized that somewhere along the way, he'd let things become more personal than he should have. Here again, she imagined, a sense of guilt was at work. As though he felt responsible for her unhappiness, however unwarranted, unsuitable, that manner of accountability was for a detective. It was their job to goad people, to push them, to unsettle them. As much as it was their job to be right, it was also their job to be wrong. Rarely did an investigation begin with the first suspect being the right one, but every discarded hypothesis narrowed the field, and in their line of work, that should be a good thing, regardless of who's toes they stepped on in the process. It was all about the greater good- it had to be.

Goren's intuition aside, the theory of the social worker had been a plausible one, made so by the few facts that they did have. She imagined that, (although she was ambivalent at this point about sharing the feeling with her partner) , had the killer not struck again, they could easily have spent months looking for a better suspect. Goren was convinced, as well, although it could not be possibly more than conjecture, that the killer had struck again in response to their mistake. In response to his, Goren's, inaptitude.

She wished there was time to talk him out of it all. To convince him that he couldn't carry such a weight and expect to stay a sane man. But there were layers around it that she was wary to pull away. Complex things that she was unsure how to bring up, like how a woman he barely knew had turned him inside out.

Eames pulled the SUV into the parking lot adjacent to the front of the junior high school. The front wheels dipped into a puddle, inconspicuously deep, and the truck plunged down, and then up again with a sudden, uncomfortable jolt. She felt Goren stir to life beside her, and she glanced out of the side of her eye at him in time to see him flash her a rather offended look.

"Sorry," she murmured as he turned back to the window, feeling one corner of her lips turn up.

This trip to JHS OO8 had actually been something they'd planned to do the day before, but the forensic report on the gun had taken longer than they'd expected, and the results had spawned a fervent conversation that had gone on long after school hours. Over the past long week, they'd exhausted their lists of interviews: parents, their friends, the kids' friends, school employees, neighbors, the coworkers that it made sense to look at. Eames hated to think of the deaths of four people being something bearing the possibility of a positive outcome- it seemed callous, even in her line of work- but they had reached an impasse, and with her partner averse, after his visit to Riker's, to the idea of focusing any longer on Juliana as a suspect, the entire process had started to become frustrating.

They'd spent the morning reorganizing things. Goren had kept everything that concerned Juliana's background in one folder, and he'd dumped the lot of it, without expression, into the trash bin beside his desk. Eames had been unable, at that, to keep herself from voicing the minute suspicion raised by Goren's recounting of his visit with Jozua Everett. It seemed entirely plausible to her that Juliana's scum-sucking brother had both the resources and the disposition to hire a copycat to get his sister out of jail. Goren had, however, looked at her as he might an amusing child when she'd brought it up, and reminded her that they had a weapon tied to all three crimes. She'd only half seriously suggested then that maybe_he_ was their killer, but her partner emphatically didn't buy it. He'd called the lawyer a "_scared kid with a big front,"_ and had made it plain he didn't intend to discuss the matter further.

Eames found a parking space in the visitor's row that stood apart from the others, not keen on the idea of trying to wedge the SUV between the smaller vehicles that were closer to the door. She glanced through the streaming windshield as she turned the ignition off. Children trickled through the doors, reduced to undulating patterns of color through the rain-streaked glass. They'd both been somewhat encouraged when the fact had surfaced, while compiling a list of the employees at Richard S. Grossley, that the Queens junior high boasted an SRO: a school resource officer. Since 9/11, the understaffed and overworked NYPD had barely enough officers to combat the customary difficulties of policing a big city, much less the assets to lend a representative to schools. It was usually reserved for areas with a higher crime rate, and Eames personally would have been less surprised to find one in south Harlem's PS 36- where Damien Moore had gone to school- than here.

They'd take what they could get though.

Eames shared a quick glance with her partner, and in unison, they pushed their opposing doors open. There, however, the synchronicity ended, for while Eames remained briefly in the vehicle while she reached behind the seat for an umbrella, Goren stepped out into the rain and closed the door behind him, circling to wait for her in front of the SUV.

Eames spent more time struggling with the umbrella than perhaps the short walk merited, but investigating a crime while dripping water on the floor seemed…unprofessional. She managed to coordinate her exit from the vehicle with the utility of the garishly red device, and shoving the door closed, her short legs carried one foot into, rather then entirely over, a gathering puddle in her hurry to reach her partner.

She bit off a foul curse as she bounded onto the curb. It served her right for wearing these shoes on a day like this. She looked away from the darkening leather boot and held the umbrella out for Goren, meaning for him to take it from her and use the advantage of his height for both their sakes, but her partner glanced away at the same moment. He turned the collar of his buttoned trench coat up, and hurried, slouch shouldered, toward the door. Eames sighed, and followed him. At least one of them wouldn't look ridiculous.

He held the door open for her as she shook the umbrella out beneath the canopy foyer. He seemed to notice it for the first time, and ran a hand absently through his soaked hair, which, longer than usual, stood on end. Eames was unable to stifle a short exhalation of laughter, arrested in the cold air and dispersed in a cloud of white. He followed her eyes, and glancing at his reflection in the glass of the door, he actually smiled.

Eames slipped around him into the interior hall, mindful of the wet stone of the floor beneath her boots. She waited while her partner unbuttoned his coat and dried the exterior of his binder on the inside of his suit jacket. She took a step back as a girl… who couldn't have been more than twelve… passed between them, casting them both that familiar look of perpetual teenaged distaste from beneath her black lined lids. Eames watched her sway out the door, wearing a skirt into the thirty-six degree New York afternoon, and shook her head.

"I wouldn't do this again if you _paid_ me," she said, glancing about at the lockers that lined the hallway.

Goren tucked his binder under his arm and did likewise. "No way in hell," he said then, to her surprise, and she thought there was amusement in his voice as he passed her.

She followed him, scanning in turn the various doors interspersed between the lockers. In retrospect, she didn't know if an SRO even_had_ an office, or if he simply came and went. She was about to ask Goren, who she knew had called ahead about something earlier that morning, when just before them, a door swung open and a woman backed out, accompanied by a peal of laughter. Someone inside the room said something Eames couldn't make out as she paused beside her partner.

"You know he wouldn't have come in if he'd known that," the woman in the hall, clinging to the doorknob, was saying. She opened her mouth to say more, but something cued her to turn her head. She caught Eames' eyes, and then her gaze shifted to her partner. She made no effort to hide her quick appraisal, which ended in a sunny, red-lipstick smile.

"What can I do for _you_?" she asked him.

Eames ground her teeth to keep from laughing, but the humor of the moment drained abruptly away at her partner's tone.

"We need to talk to a few people about Kieran and Brendan Carmichael," he said, his voice flat, and unamused.

Eames saw the woman's face turn pale, the smile disappear. She cleared her throat. "You're detectives," she said in a hushed voice. "Right. Um…who're you wanting?" She seemed fiercely embarrassed.

"You have an SRO," Eames stepped in for her partner. "A resource officer?"

The other woman nodded fiercely, as though relieved. "Yeah… Nate. He's got an off…" She stopped, and without a glance at the person she'd been speaking with inside the room, she turned, colliding with the edge of the door as she hurried to show them down the hall.

Goren cast Eames an ambiguous glance as the two of them followed her. She glanced back at them as she led them onward, the pinpoints of her four inch heels clicking at a dangerous rhythm against the damp floor.

"Do you have any uh…you know… leads?" she asked, her voice low.

"That's why we're here," Eames told her.

"Did you know either of them?" Goren asked.

Disappointment was evident on her face as she stopped before another door. She shook her head, opening it. "Sorry t'say," she murmured, pushing the door in and leading them through into an open, central office. A desk stood at the forefront, where an older woman peered at them over her bifocals.

"Angie," their guide addressed the woman. "These're_detectives_. They wanna talk to Nate."

The older woman at the desk took the two detectives in with a much less appraising glance than had her counterpart, then jerked a disinterested thumb over her shoulder.

"Door's open, ain't it?" she said, and went back to her typing. The door she'd indicated was open, but only barely.

Eames glanced at Goren, who seemed eager to move on. He circled the desk, and as his partner caught up with him, he stretched his hand out to tap on the door. Before his knuckles connected with the wood, however, the door moved inward, and a man, glancing at his watch, almost collided with Goren on his way out. From the disadvantage of almost a half foot, the SRO cast her partner a startled look, covered quickly by a harried smile.

"You need me for something?" he asked, moving Goren back with his smaller form as he edged out the door.

"These are detectives, Nate," a voice piped from behind them, and both Eames and her partner turned to face their forgotten guide. Eames raised an eyebrow at her, and she flushed and put the secretary's desk between them.

"I was wondering when you two would turn up," the SRO said, snapping the door shut behind him. His tone seemed more reflective, than chiding, however, and he checked his watch again.

"I hate to be rude," he said. "I know this is important, but I've got a meeting in twenty that I can't get out of. Actually… you might want to tag along." He glanced from one detective to the other. Principal Harver's invited any of the kids affected by… Kieran and Brendan's deaths to stay after school today to chat with counselors. I called down a friend of mine from victim's services… she's a psychologist." The man shrugged, passed a hand through his graying brown hair, frowning. "Thought it might help."

Goren glanced at Eames, raising both eyebrows in question. She nodded shortly at him, and he turned back to nod at the smaller man.

"Good," he said, checking his watch again. "Shall we…" he began, but Goren interrupted him.

"I'm Robert Goren," he said, extending his hand casually.

The other man blinked at him, a silent pause hanging in the air for a brief moment before he laughed shortly, belatedly taking Goren's hand.

"Right," he said. "A man should never have so much on his mind. Of course you know what I mean." He offered his hand in turn to Eames. "I'm Nathan Harris," he said.

-

The meeting was scheduled for the library, on the other end of the school. Harris walked slowly, ostensibly to give them time to speak.

"I saw the news this morning," he said, and Eames saw, on her other side, Goren's shoulders rise. "I'm curious," the man added, "what you had on this girl."

Eames glanced at him, eyeing the officer's uniform he wore. "And we're curious what you have on these kids," she told him. "What kind of trouble were they into?"

Harris nodded, the thin smile that passed across his lips showing Eames that he understood her innuendo. "Well…" One hand rubbed a patch on his cheek, where a day or so's worth of dark stubble grew. "I've been working with Brendan since he was in sixth grade. Part of my program on combating gang activity in youth…I've been running it over the summers for years. He's one of my… repeat offenders."

"Repeat offenders," Goren echoed quickly, interrupting him. You had kids from more than one school in your summer programs?"

Harris nodded. "I've seen their pictures all over the news this week," he said. "I thought I recognized the second boy. Damien something, but…"

Goren already had the photo in his hand, and passed it across Eames to Harris.

"Damien Moore," Goren clarified as Harris took the photo, glancing over it as he walked. He started to hand the picture back to Goren, but found instead another being shoved into his hand.

"This was Devon Eldridge," her partner said.

Harris looked at the photograph of the dead boy for a long moment, then shook his head and handed both pictures to Eames. She took them, and passed them back to Goren, who sighed and returned her disappointed glance. Another dead end.

"So you were saying, about Brendan?" Eames prompted. Maybe they'd get something useful out of this visit.

Harris nodded. "He was mostly running drugs for his old man, although Carmichael never would have admitted it, the son of a bitch. When Kieran started here at the beginning of the year I thought maybe there was some hope for him." He glanced at Eames, and she was taken aback by the profound sadness in his faded blue eyes.

"But?" she encouraged him , feeling her partner staring intently at the other man as they walked.

Harris's gaze flicked to Goren, lingered for a moment, then he faced forward and shook his head. "The grapevine spoke," he said, "and when we searched Kieran we found his stash. OTC's he'd doctored to look like prescription meds. I'm not sure which one of them was worse."

"You can't save everyone, huh?" Goren said softly, and Harris looked sharply at him.

"Probably not," he shrugged, pausing at a doorway. He pushed it open, and they found themselves facing a roomful of children.

Harris propped the door open for them, and after gazing for a moment at the interior of the library, he turned to face them again before they entered.

"But you do have to try, don't you?" he asked.

-

**  
**


	16. Changes In The Weather

**Queens**

**5:15 P.M. **

Eames craned her neck to look over the top of the booth, to the wet street between the coffee shop and his apartment, and wondered what was taking him so long. She sighed, more impatient than worried, and sat back, taking another drink of her coffee.

The meeting Nathan Harris had invited them to had not yielded any new leads, but neither she nor her partner thought that the key to solving their case would among the observations of a child. Harris had tried to be helpful. He appeared to have a good rapport with the children- knew most of them by name- and encouraged them to talk to "his friends" Robert and Alex about the Carmichael boys, but the general consensus was that somehow the boys' father, a bit of a local "bad guy" legend, was at fault. Eames found she couldn't lament the fact that six and seventh graders seemed not to have a clear understanding of the fact that their classmates… kids they'd eaten lunch with, sat beside in English, been on the soccer team with… had been the victims of a serial killer.

The psychologist Harris had mentioned from victim's services had taken up most of the meeting talking to the children about death, and the feelings they had about it. Eames had passed the time watching her partner, who's attention had seemed riveted by the discussion. She'd realized then, that sitting amid a group of junior high kids listening to them talk about grief was probably as close as Goren had ever gotten to therapy for himself. He'd been even more pensive than usual afterward, saying next to nothing since they'd parted ways with Harris.

Eames took another sip of coffee and checked the time on her cell phone. Goren had insisted when they left the middle school that they go by One PP and pick up those things they had taken from Juliana's apartment- her laptop, a box of receipts, several of her journals… though she'd been out of jail less than a day, he seemed adamant about returning everything as quickly as possible, as though not to… inconvenience… their former suspect for a moment longer than necessary. They'd stopped by his apartment for the journals he'd taken home with him, and Eames couldn't help wondering if this was all some kind of excuse- a convenient reason for him to see her again.

She sighed and slid to the edge of the booth, standing with the intention of buying herself a chocolate-chip muffin at the counter, when she saw him. She felt confusion immediately crease her forehead. He walked, head down, across the street, having abandoned his suit and tie for jeans and a t-shirt. No coat, despite the fact that it was crawling toward thirty degrees and threatening sleet.

Eames dropped back into the booth as he pulled open the glass door, chimes jangling cheerfully at his entrance. He bypassed fifty varieties of coffee and slid into the seat across from her, dropping two bound notebooks between them. Rain had speckled the shoulders of his green t-shirt, and she could see the goose-flesh on his forearms.

"You're not going, are you?" she asked him, leaning back in her seat.

Goren's dark eyes left her face, looking at the table. He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger, hard – one of the many gestures Eames knew. He was thinking.

Finally, he shook his head, shortly.

"Bobby…" she began, but stopped. What would she be doing, to try to convince him he should go? What purpose would that serve?

"Do you mind?" he asked softly, his voice tinged with genuine concern. He looked up, scratched the back of his neck with one hand. He was uncomfortable.

Eames raised both eyebrows and gave herself some time to think by choosing that moment to finish her coffee. One, long drink. She sat the cup aside and pulled the notebooks across the table toward her.

"Why?" she couldn't help asking.

Goren sighed, slumping down in the seat, one long leg splayed in the aisle. He held his hand aloft over the table, his lips parting to speak, but instead he shook his head again, and let his hand drop to the table between them.

Eames searched his face, seeing there some private turmoil, and decided at that moment to try to talk to him. He had no one, and that bothered her.

"You're attracted to her, aren't you?" she asked, for it was not in her nature to be circumspect.

His gaze leapt from the table, but he didn't seem surprised by the question. Instead, he seemed to consider it, as though he hadn't admitted as much to himself yet. Then he looked back at the table, reaching for a napkin from Eames' side and scrubbing at a dark ring left by her coffee cup.

Eames exhaled a quiet sigh, a knot of frustration in her throat. How could she hope to bridge the distance between them if he refused to talk to her? She opened her mouth to try another angle, when he crushed the napkin and dropped it on the table.

"Yes," he said. When he looked at her in the brief silence that followed, his eyes were questioning. _Why does it matter_, they asked.

"You know there was nothing you could have done, Bobby," she said, frowning. "The evidence…" she trailed off.

A wan smile touched his lips and he looked away, staring through the glass at the wet, twilit street.

"I called A.C.S. while I was upstairs, to see if I could just… take her things by her office and avoid all this..." He leaned his head against the back of the seat, still not facing her. "Turns out she no longer has a job."

Eames sat back and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she leaned toward the table, folding her arms against it.

"It's not your fault, Bobby," she said.

He looked sharply at her. "Is it not?" The words were short, irritable. "I don't believe in coincidences. There's some reason why she was connected to both of those kids, and it was my _job_ to find that. I didn't ask the right questions, talk to the right people, see what I…"

"Stop it," she interrupted, her voice stern, but gentle. "You realize when you say that _you_ screwed up, you're saying it about me too."

He sucked in a breath, probably to dispute her, but she waved him off.

"You aren't omniscient. You can't see everything. You're_human_, Bobby. That's all we both are."

His eyes grew sad, and he stared at her for a moment before he spoke.

"That's what _she_ said." The words were tinged with bitterness. Before Eames could ask him what he meant, he pulled a piece of folded paper out of his shirt pocket. He dropped it on the notebooks in front of her.

"Her cell phone number," he said. "Call her and find out where she is… take her stuff back to her?"

Eames picked up the piece of paper, unfolded it and glanced at the number, briefly wondering if it was in her handwriting. It wasn't. She glanced quizzically at her partner, confused by his behavior. On one hand, he seemed overpowered by his guilt, and afraid to face the consequences. On the other, he was like a teenager too shy to be direct… to face rejection. She realized then that Juliana had perhaps gotten beneath his skin more than she'd thought.

She refolded the piece of paper and shoved it into her jacket pocket. A look of gratitude passed across his face when she asked no more questions.

Her partner stood as she gathered her cell phone, the keys to the SUV, and the two journals he'd brought down. She watched him as she did, and thought he still seemed unsure, as though he desperately did want to go with her, but could not bring himself to do it.

They crossed the coffee shop in silence, Goren opening the door for her. He walked across the street beside her, hands in his pockets and shoulders bowed against the freezing rain, and waited as she unlocked the door and climbed in. He hovered there, starting to shiver, one hand holding the car door open.

"What, Bobby?" she asked, seeing there was something else on his mind.

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. "Tell her…" he began, but stopped, and shook his head. Then he stepped out of the way and shut the door for her, holding a hand up in parting and moving toward his apartment steps.

Eames hurriedly jabbed the keys into the ignition and rolled down the window.

"Bobby!" she leaned out and shouted after him. He stopped in the headlights and looked back, bringing one hand up to shield his eyes from the sleet.

"What are you doing later tonight?" she asked, meaning to coax him to dinner with her.

"I," he told her succinctly, "am going to bed. I'll see you in the morning." He started to turn and walk away again, but faced her one last time. "Thank you, Alex," he added.

For what, she wasn't sure.

-

When Goren had first brought up returning Juliana's confiscated property, Eames had thought the idea was to have an excuse to go over some things with her again. When she'd suggested they should show her the list of employees from all three schools and see if someone stood out to her, Goren had instead seemed ambivalent. As she drove, she realized this was probably a large part of the reason why he'd elected not to come with her. He knew, in retrospect, that they needed to sit down with her, take another look at possible connections- at what they could have missed. She thought the fact that he'd left his leather binder on the passenger seat- with copies of everything she would need- proved that. He just didn't want to do it. Calling ACS to see if he could drop everything off there when she wasn't in was probably him trying to talk himself out of the necessity. However illogical it was, Eames thought she understood.

She turned down her music and reached up to flick on the overhead light. One hand guiding the SUV down the street, she peered at the paper where she'd scribbled the address Juliana had given her, realizing she'd gone one street too far. She turned the light off again and sped up, making a right on Fourth Avenue and appreciating, not for the first time, the elegance of a grid system.

Juliana hadn't answered her cell phone the first time Eames had called, and she'd actually driven halfway to Rochdale, intending to just knock on her door, when the erstwhile social worker had returned her call. She'd sounded apprehensive the moment she realized that it was one of the two detectives calling her, and Eames had felt an instant pang of sympathy at Juliana's relieved tone when she'd explained her purpose. Much to her chagrin, however, it turned out the former murder suspect had not been able to bring herself to go home, and was instead across the city at her brother's apartment. The thought actually crossed Eames mind to rescind at that, and to ask Juliana to meet her elsewhere, but had bitten her tongue and taken down the address.

She hadn't been surprised to learn that Jozua Everett lived one building down from the corner of Lexington and Third, perhaps one of the most aristocratic neighborhoods in the Upper East Side. She pulled onto Lexington and drove slowly, the tires making a revolving, slushing sound on the icy pavement. Peering through the windshield, she smiled wryly at Juliana's description of the place. "_The tallest and most pretentious building on the street_."

It was easy enough to see, as it had a good four floors on the surrounding real estate. Eames pulled the SUV to the curb and turned off the ignition, and on impulse popped the "police business" placard onto the dashboard. She turned the interior light back on and picked up her partner's leather binder, unzipping it and shuffling through the papers until she'd found everything she would need to show Juliana and filed it toward the front. After all they'd put the social worker through, Eames was damned if she was going to go in there and look disorganized.

She stepped out of the vehicle and wrested the box with Juliana's laptop and journals from the back seat, dropped Goren's binder on top of it, and nudged the door shut with her hip. Then she walked gingerly across the slushy sidewalk to the front door. As she approached, a man in red livery opened it for her, but just as she flashed him a smile and was about to make a b-line for the elevator, he stopped her with a hand on her elbow.

"I'm sorry…" he said. "You're here to see whom?"

"Whom?" Eames repeated in flat tone. "Uh… Everett." She left out the first name.

The man nodded, as though he'd expected that answer. "I need to see your ID," he said.

Eames almost laughed. "You're kidding, right?" she said.

The doorman merely looked at her, humorless.

She sighed, remembering Goren's description of his visit to Jozua Everett's office, and the circuitous process he'd undergone to reach him. Eames tucked the box she was carrying under one arm- the doorman making no effort to help her- and jerked her ID out of her pocket. The man inspected it closely, before nodding his approval and gesturing at another man, standing quietly beside the elevator door.

Eames took her ID back and shook her head as she allowed the man by the elevator to usher her inside. She was too impatient to feel any inclination to speak to the attendant, and tapped her foot- which was cold, and wet- anxiously as the elevator climbed. One thing could be said: Juliana was safe from the media here. And most of New York City, at that.

The elevator deposited her on the seventeenth floor, and she found herself in a sort of foyer with only one door. Crossing to it, she grinned at how inane she felt, knocking on the door of a millionaire's apartment with the toe of her boot.

There wasn't a response immediately, and she was about to put the box down to try Juliana's cell phone again when she heard a strange electronic whir and then the metallic click of a deadbolt being disengaged. The door opened and Eames found herself face to face with the social worker.

She looked tired. Her blonde hair was pulled haphazardly back from her face, her feet bare beneath a pair of overlarge sweatpants that looked as though they didn't belong to her.

Eames found then, that for perhaps one of the few times in her life, she had no idea what to say. They stood there in the door, facing each other, for what seemed a long moment. Then Juliana's eyes trailed from Eames' face to the box, and she held out her hands. Eames, startled into motion, passed the box to her.

"I'm sorry," she said, lamely, before she knew was going to say it.

Juliana said nothing for a moment, staring at her in what Eames' thought seemed like irritation, then the social worker shook her head, and the expression was gone. She inhaled a deep breath, and appeared as though she was about to speak, when her eyes fell on Goren's leather binder.

Eames' hand darted out quickly and grabbed it. "Right…" she said. "We were…I was hoping you could give me a minute to go over a couple of things with you… to see if perhaps there's something we missed."

Juliana's eyes were on the binder as Eames clutched it to her chest. They flicked away to the elevator, then back to Eames, her brow furrowed. Then she nodded, and nudged the door the rest of the way open with her foot.

"Robert isn't with you?" she asked as Eames circled her into the apartment, and the detective looked at her, startled to hear her partner's first name.

"Um…no. He uh.. couldn't make it."

Juliana glanced again at the binder as she pressed her back against the door to close it, but said nothing else about it.

"I'm sorry if I seem a little…out of it," Juliana said. "I haven't slept in about a week." She gave Eames a small smile as though trying to imply she was exaggerating, but Eames had the sudden impression it was the truth, or close to it.

Juliana passed her, clutching the box, and led her down a short hallway. As that hallway spilled them into a large, open room, Eames paused in enforced awe, and experienced a sudden wave of vertigo. To her far right, the white carpet dove into empty space as it met the floor to ceiling windows that comprised the entire outer wall. Beyond, the lights of the Upper East Side, and beyond that, all of Manhattan, glittered through the frozen winter rain like living art. As Goren had described that office building, virtually everything in Jozua Everett's apartment was white. The carpet, the grey-veined marble countertops, the huge, overstuffed couch. Eames compulsively glanced down at her boots and checked the soles before she followed Juliana across the immaculate room, eyeing the glass wall warily.

The social worker carried the box around the couch to a round table, set in the corner between the glass and an adjoining wall. As Eames approached the couch, she saw a pair of feet, bare, resting on the back, and as she circled it, she saw who she could only assume was Jozua's twin brother. He was lying on his back, legs propped over the back of the couch, head tilted over the edge as he stared, upside down, at a marble chess board. While she watched, he stretched one arm out, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and awkwardly maneuvered a piece. Eames, with her many years on the force, had no trouble recognizing the dark, bruised scars of old track marks, tracing his veins from his wrist to the crook of his arm.

She glanced back as Juliana slid the box onto the white table. Eames took the chair farthest from the glass, and almost laughed when Juliana dragged the other chair away from the window and set it beside hers.

"Finish the game later, Riv," she said over her shoulder, and Eames saw the boy- with his wild blue hair he looked even younger than Jozua – smile slyly. Still staring at the chess board, he stretched his arm out again and with one finger, tipped a piece over onto its side.

"It's already over," he said, and turned to look at Juliana. The smile vanished when he saw Eames, and he quickly rearranged himself until his feet were on the floor.

"This is Detective Eames," Juliana told him, and River's gaze snapped from Eames' face to his sister's, his grey eyes huge. Eames felt a moment of pity for him as he hurriedly pulled the sleeves of his shirt down to cover his scarred arms.

"It's ok, Riv," Juliana told him softly. "You feel like making some coffee?"

"Sure," he mumbled, and casting Eames another worried glance, he was off the couch and crossing the room to the kitchen, seeming grateful to escape.

Eames cast a quick look at the abandoned chess set, one king lying defeated, and chuckled softly. "I was never any good at that game," she said, glancing at Juliana.

"I couldn't beat him at it when he was five." Juliana looked back to Eames, stifling a yawn. "I hope you like strong coffee," she said. "River's something of a caffeine junkie."

Eames smiled. "I _love_ strong coffee," she assured her. Laying Goren's leather case against the table, she unzipped it, and glanced about the room again. Behind her, she could see another door at the mouth of a longer hallway, the room beyond open and dark, and she suddenly realized how completely silent the apartment was. Calm.

"Is your… is the other one here?" Eames asked, turning back to see Juliana watching her curiously. A thin smirk touched her lips, as the detective's hesitant tone did not go amiss.

"No," she said, pushing the box away to give Eames more room on the table. "He stays busy."

"I bet," Eames said. "I heard he's representing Marcus Verrecchia… keeping a guy like that out of jail's gotta be a lot of work." The moment the trite comment was out of her mouth, she regretted it. Regardless of what she thought of him, this was his sister she was talking to.

Juliana, however, merely raised an eyebrow. "Who is he?"

Eames stared in surprised silence for a moment. "Verrecchia?" Where'd this girl been? Under a rock? "He's a night club owner...the one accused of shooting his girlfriend. Has confirmed ties to organized crime..."

Eames realized from the expression that fell on Juliana's face then- appalled, worried- that she'd likely had no idea her brother was a mob lawyer. The social worker pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes briefly before dropping her hands into her lap.

"I mean.. didn't you wonder how he got the money for… _this_?" Eames waved her hand to incorporate the exquisite penthouse apartment, then mentally berated herself for letting her mouth run off again.

Juliana frowned, but not angrily. Pensive, perhaps. "Not from working for the mob, I promise."

Eames raised an eyebrow, but bit her tongue to keep from asking. Juliana didn't offer. The detective flipped open the leather binder instead, and had peeled the top page away when Juliana spoke again.

"How is he?"

Eames looked at her sharply, and it took her a moment to grasp what the other woman meant. "My partner?"

Juliana nodded.

Eames eyes found the page she held in her hand, suddenly uncomfortable. "He uh… gets by," she said. _Barely_.

"He could have come," Juliana said. Her tone wasn't affronted, or ridiculing. Just a soft statement of fact. "But," she added, fingers tracing something unseen on the table. "I understand why he didn't. I think he and I have a lot in common."

Eames set the paper down, and looked openly at the other woman, whose eyes were downcast, and distant. There was suddenly something in Juliana's demeanor that was very like her partner's, earlier that evening at the coffee shop. Shy, and longing. She found that, for the second time that day, she didn't know what to say; she was caught between the protective instincts she felt for her partner, and a sort of sadness at the tragic irony- that two people who obviously felt something similar toward one another might never speak again unless she did something about it.

The moment, however, was interrupted by an electronic chime from the table in front of the couch. Juliana abandoned her briefly, finding her cell phone and flipping it open as she returned to her chair. Eames was startled by her sudden laughter.

"My brother wants to know how you take your coffee," she said, her eyes glittering with amusement.

Eames turned her head, glancing across the room at the distant kitchen, but didn't see him. "Um…lots of everything," she told Juliana.

The social worker pressed several keys on her phone and then set it aside.

"He's somewhat anti-social," she said with a fond smile. "And lazy, apparently."

Eames couldn't help but smile. She suddenly realized that she liked Juliana, and despite the purveyor of their surroundings, felt comfortable there, and she wished that the circumstances of her visit were different. She glanced down at the page beneath her hand and bit her lip.

"You know…" Juliana said. "I spent five days in solitary at Riker's…" she paused, and Eames studied her expression. Her tone wasn't accusatory, but her expression was distant, eyes trained on the glittering city beyond the window. "…lying awake at night _trying_ to think of some reason why I'm connected to two victims of the same killer. Trying to remember if I'd ever spoken to someone about them both, or if anyone had ever asked me too many questions about them…" She looked back to Eames, the hand that lay against the table lifting a helpless fraction. "I went over everyone in my office wondering if anyone had ever struck me as…the type."

"It's not always something that's obvious…" Eames said softly.

Juliana nodded, slowly. "I know. I assume that was working against me in my previous… predicament."

"Well…" Eames said. "My partner doesn't believe in coincidences like this…"

"Neither do I," Juliana said.

Eames opened her mouth to continue, when, with a ceramic clink, a cup of coffee appeared in front of her and a voice intoned:

"Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre."

Eames looked up, startled at the unexpected flurry of words. River glanced away the moment she attempted to meet his eyes, setting another cup of coffee, milky brown like her own, in front of his sister. Juliana smiled again as her brother, having apparently said all he meant to say, retreated once more across the expansive living room, disappearing down the dark hallway.

"He's quoting Sherlock Holmes," Juliana said, laughter in her voice. "Appropriate."

"Sounds like he thinks this all may be just your incredibly bad luck," Eames interpreted, picking up her cup and blowing across the top it.

Juliana shook her head and wrapped her fingers around her own cup, staring into it. "He thinks in mathematical terms," she said. "Reduces everything to a function of probability. He doesn't deal well with things he can't write a formula for."

"People?" Eames asked.

Juliana nodded, and looked at her. "Sometimes I wonder if I screwed up with them. Their mother…our father… essentially ignored them, so what they learned about life, they learned from me. I wasn't always…a humanist." She stopped there, her brow furrowed as though she'd said more than she'd intended to, and she nodded toward the binder beneath Eames' hand.

"What do you want me to look at?" she asked.

It took Eames a moment to switch gears, and she stared at the stapled sheaf of paper she found between her fingers for a moment before she recalled the approach she'd intended for this visit.

"This," she said, sliding it across the table to Juliana, "is a list of all the employees, full and part time, from both of their schools. The Eldridge boy's is from the year of his death."

Juliana nodded slowly, and scanned the first page as Eames continued.

"We'll still cross-check everyone from ACS…but if you see anyone that you know might have had contact with both of the boys you worked with…"

Juliana nodded again, silent, as she studied the lists. She pulled away the staple and laid the lists from both schools side by side, comparing.

Eames took a sip of her coffee, and felt her eyes widen perceptibly. _Strong_ didn't begin to describe it. She swallowed and set it aside just as Juliana looked up sharply.

"You know... I don't know if it will make any difference in what you look for, but Damien Moore went to Frederick Douglas Academy until the middle of the school year in 2006- he was a class behind Devon Eldridge and didn't know him…but…" She bit one fingernail thoughtfully.

"But?" Eames prompted, leaning forward as Juliana turned another page and sighed heavily.

"I met both of them at that school… it was the year that the social work program and the NYPD were collaborating on a study…2004, I think, on the effectiveness of law enforcement in schools." She flipped another page, frowning. "You know Frederick Douglas had a school resource officer… did you talk to him?"

Eames raised an eyebrow. "We didn't see anything about that. Do you remember his name?"

Juliana shook her head. "No. But he runs a program every summer for parents and at risk kids…about resisting gang violence."

-

**  
**


	17. A Late Frost

-

Juliana studied his face as he gazed silently out the car window, and she wondered if the feelings that he stirred in her were more akin to those that a mother felt for her child, than a sister for her brother. She recalled what she'd said to Alex Eames hours ago… expressing that great fear that she lived with, day in and day out: that she hadn't done enough, hadn't done the right things. Did parents feel this way? If so, how did they ever sleep?

"You know," Juliana said softly into the stillness of the backseat, where she sat beside her brother. "I never told you thank you…"

He didn't look at her, but she could see the reflection of his face in the glass, superimposed on the lights of Midtown as they scrolled past. "I never believed any of it," he said softly.

"What if it _had_ been me?" she asked, because his answer would speak volumes about the boy she had, for the most part, raised on her own.

He still didn't look at her, but she saw, in the reflection, his brow furrow. "That's not fair," he said, and she heard a ten year old boy, losing a game of chess.

She sighed, and turned away, staring for a moment to the city beyond her window. It wasn't fair, really. To make him admit something he knew she didn't want to hear. In many ways, he was more of a child than his twin. She'd helped them in the only way she'd known how- she'd gotten them to trade the attention they lacked from their parents for the comfort of books, science, music. Confidence through achievement- it's what she'd done herself. They'd learned the lesson well, but now, it was the only thing they had. Both of them lived inside a cocoon, surrounded by their talents, which they'd cultivated to perfection. Neither one of them understood people, or cared to.

She didn't know how to fix that.

She said nothing more, and he didn't offer. It was ironic, in a way, considering that Jozua made a career of being, among other things, eloquently verbose.

The car coasted off the expressway and wound it's way through eastern Queens in silence. Jozua had offered for her to stay at his apartment on the Upper East Side as long as she wanted, but she'd said no, and he wasn't the sort to insist. It was hard to tell with him what he took personally- his affect was like stone, with everyone but his brother. The truth, was, though, that after five nights on a foul cot in a drafty cell at Riker's, what she wanted more than anything else was a hot bath, and her own bed.

He'd offered to go with her, to walk her up to her apartment, and this she hadn't refused. At two o'clock in the morning, she didn't expect to see any stragglers from the day's media excess- who, she realized, still weren't convinced she was innocent- and Rochdale, while not the Upper East Side, was also not lower Harlem. It was, however, still comforting to sense the protective ardor of family.

At last, the car pulled alongside the curb outside her apartment complex. She turned to thank her brother again, but found him staring intently out the window still. This time, however, he'd ducked his head to glance upward, at the, rising, drenched concrete of the incongruously named Greenway Villa's north wing.

She knew what he was thinking before he turned around, a creased expression on his face that was somewhere between bemused, and appalled.

"Jay," he said. "You know you never have to work again if you don't want to. And you don't have to live _here_."

It was strange, in a way, to hear her twenty-six year old younger brother promise something most men twice his age couldn't offer a girl. He meant it.

"You know better than that, Joz," she said softly.

He glanced through the back window at the street behind them, frowning at the cars parked along the side, then sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a muted sigh. He turned to the front and tapped the glass he'd had installed to separate the back seat of his Lexus from his driver, and when the man rolled it down, he leaned forward and mumbled something into his ear that Juliana couldn't hear.

He cast her another pleading glance as he settled back in his seat. "You sure?" he asked.

In answer, Juliana blew out an impatient sigh and pushed open her door. She grabbed the box with the things the detective had returned to her, on the seat between them, and swung her legs out of the car. She found her footing in the gross, blackened winter slush, and turned back to tell him goodbye.

Instead, she found Jozua already out of the car, waiting for her on the curb. She almost smiled and almost sighed at the same time, and found that, despite his annoying superciliousness, she had no desire to argue for him to stay behind.

She rounded the car, and as she stepped up to the curb beside her brother, he surprised her by taking the box out of her hands. He cast another furtive glance back at the driver's side of the car, the front window now rolled down despite the bitter cold.

It was, at least, not raining anymore. As they walked, Juliana glanced briefly at the sky. A sharp wind had torn the thick clouds into ragged clumps, behind which a thin film of stars hid. The moon, however, remained veiled, and the sidewalk was dark. She shivered beneath the overlarge coat- one of Jozua's he'd lent her- and walked closer to him.

"Are you coming to the airport with us tomorrow?" he asked.

Juliana shook her head, feeling his eyes on her. "I told him goodbye tonight." River had missed more than he should have of his last semester at M.I.T. "Goodbyes at airports make me cry." The memories of the few times her father had brought the twins to tell her goodbye, when she'd left on a plane for another long semester in college, were burned into her soul. If only she could have gotten them out of that house…

Jozua was silent for a moment, as though remembering something similar. Behind them, the wind hurled a bottle along the street, and the sound of glass scraping against concrete brought his head around nervously.

"Don't worry," Juliana said, smiling. "We're almost there." She pointed him toward a recessed walkway that bisected the north and east wings, lit only by the reddish glow of a Coke machine. Jozua went ahead, finding the wrought iron stairs that led to the second floor. Juliana paused beside the Coke machine, searching the pockets of the coat Jozua had lent her for coins. The metallic sound of his footsteps rhythmically ascending, and the electronic whine of the vending machine filled her senses.

She withdrew her hand from the pocket of the coat, and raised a quarter to the slot.

The next moment was blur, but the thing she would remember best, later, was the sound the quarter had made hitting the concrete, and the way it had rolled beneath the machine.

Then there was an arm, circling her shoulders, her neck, and the hard press of plastic against the side of her head.

"Don't move, sweetheart," a voice breathed in her ear. His breath was warm, wet with condensation.

Jozua's footsteps stopped. A dog barked, somewhere on the street.

"Jay?" her brother's voice floated down, and a hand clamped over her mouth, cold and smelling of leather. She heard Jozua's footsteps begin again, descending now.

The man who held her twisted, so that she was between he and the staircase, in time to see Jozua stop, stare, grey eyes wide like a little boy's. Juliana felt the pressure of the gun leave her temple, and then she saw it, the sleek, black plastic aimed at her brother. She couldn't move.

"Drop the box, rich boy," the voice said, and he tightened his grip around Juliana, pulling her back, away from the staircase. If she'd been alone, she would have fought him. But the gun pointed at her brother left her frozen with sick paranoia. No coherent thought would form. Only sensations, like the way the press of his face against the side of her head was ribbed, fabric, and that he smelled of cloves.

She watched as Jozua did what he was told, setting the box slowly on the stair at his feet, then holding up his hands. He met her eyes for a moment, and she saw an old fear. No surprise. Then his eyes flicked away, to mouth of the walkway, nervous.

The man cocked the gun, making Juliana's heart skip a beat, and made a quick, jerking movement with it toward her brother.

"Your wallet, kid. And the watch. On the ground."

Jozua obeyed, taking the few remaining stairs to the ground and taking his wallet from the inside of his suit coat. He laid it several feet in front of the man, then straightened. Juliana saw his eyes flick past them both, subtly, as he made a show of having difficulty with his watch. Or was it a show? His fingers were trembling; she could see that.

He released it from his wrist, and took several steps closer to the man, who backed away in turn. When Jozua straightened again, after laying the watch beside his wallet, he looked again, pointedly this time, over the man's shoulder.

"_Drop the fucking gun!" _

The words came from behind them. Unexpected. The man who held her whirled, and she stumbled, her foot catching beneath his. He released her suddenly, throwing that arm out impulsively for balance, and she ducked. Her knees hit the concrete, and she felt her brother's hand on her upper arm, pulling her up, hard.

The sound of gunfire ricocheted through the small walkway, and Juliana came to her feet in time to look in the direction of the other voice. The face, the form, wouldn't register until later. The man that had been driving the car. Her brother's car.

There was another, muted blast from their assailant, and the more distant man ducked behind the wall. Jozua was pushing her, away, and then they were in the open, in what passed for a park at the center of the complex. Gunfire echoed behind them- a disjointed sequence of muted _pops _and a louder, angrier discharge.

They'd made it to the wrought iron gate that led from the park to the street when a bullet whistled through the air, so close to her ear that she felt its heat.

Her brother grabbed the latch of the gate when she ducked compulsively, and kicked it, hard, the base frozen in the crystallized mud. To their right, lights came on in an apartment on the ground floor. More flickered on, checkered across the face of the building.

She looked back then, and she saw the man, face shrouded in a black ski mask, aiming at _her_ as she slipped through the gate.

Time seemed to stand still as she waited for the bullet to slip through the air.

_What was this? _she thought. _After everything she'd been through, everything she'd overcome… what was this, to die in the mud? _

She saw Jozua, still on the other side of the fence, turn back to face their assailant. In the weird sludge that time had become, she saw his grey eyes widen, felt the warmth of one hand as it left her wrist, and then he moved. The man with the gun disappeared, blocked from her view, but the sound carried as she stumbled backward, landing hard in the churned slush of the sidewalk beyond the gate.

Another muted pop, then another.

Then a dog was barking, louder this time.

A man was yelling, and more lights came on. A door slammed open, bathing the ground in warm yellow.

She scrambled to her feet, using the gate to pull herself up. The man with the gun was gone. Her brother still stood there, facing away, on the other side of the fence. One hand, knuckles white, gripped the railing. Juliana jerked the fence open wider, and found his arm, her hands leaving muddy stains on his tailored coat.

He released the fence at her touch, and turned to face her. At first, she breathed a sigh of relief, when he smiled, his eyes glittering with moisture.

"I'm ok," he said, and she saw the red on his lips. Stark, against the pallor of his skin.

"_Joz…"_ Her voice was a choked whisper. She touched his face, his neck, his chest…looking for it. It was there, just inside the jacket of his suit- a hot, sticky moisture.

"I'm…sorry," he said, and his eyes widened with the sudden force of pain, and he coughed. Blood trickled down his chin, frothy. He raised a hand, touched it, and regarded the red that stained his fingers curiously.

Then his knees buckled, and he collapsed.

"_Joz!" _She found her voice then. A shrill, angry, terrified shriek, welling from a deep place in her stomach.

In the distance, somewhere, were sirens.

-


	18. A Late Frost Part II

-

The phone call had not been something he'd expected.

He'd told his partner he was going to bed, and that's what he'd done. He'd walked up the stairs to his apartment, and managed only to kick away his shoes and maneuver himself between the comforter and the sheets before the light had blinked out.

He'd looked at the clock when the phone startled him from a deep, dreamless unconsciousness- just after three thirty A.M. He hadn't recognized the number, but he'd known the curiosity would keep him awake, and so he'd answered it, only to hear the sudden, electronic dullness of a line disconnecting.

He'd pressed the button to redial the number, and he'd recognized her voice, cheerful, and bright, prompting him to leave a message at the tone. At first, he'd lain there, holding the phone, and waited for her to call back, his by then active mind cataloguing all the possible reasons she would have called him at that time of night. It never occurred to him to wonder where she'd gotten his number.

By the time fifteen minutes had passed, he'd exhausted the pleasant suppositions and begun to wonder if something might not be wrong. It was easy for a detective, especially one with a propensity for negativity such as he, to imagine any number of unpleasant scenarios, and it was this that had driven him from bed, just before four A.M., with sleep all but forgotten.

If anything, he'd learned to be resourceful, and it had taken only one phone call at the behest of his worry to realize that something _was_ wrong. He'd asked about her… Juliana Everett… but they'd told him only one person had passed through the system with that last name. Her brother.

He'd been dressed and pulling on his coat in the early morning cold, car keys in his hand, before it crossed his mind to consider what he was doing. Reacting, again, to something stronger than rationality.

-

It was the first time he'd been in a hospital since his mother had died. The antiseptic, remote feeling of the green checkered hallway, nurses and doctors drifting through the early morning like so many ghosts, reminded him of the way he'd felt when he'd left his mother's room that night- the night she'd died. A sort of alone made all the more potent by the emptiness of his own making that lay beyond. He'd remained there in the dark, beside her empty bed, listening to the sounds of life teeming beyond the doorway, and had let it flow through him- the way the emotions he felt, full and smothering, seemed a selfish departure from reality. Beyond the door of that room, people went about the business of life. Some of them… the doctors, and nurses, more adamantly than most… but there were others. There were those ridden with cancer, like his mother had been, gazing out the window at one more New York night. There were husbands, fathers, children, out there in that hallway, clinging to hope. Was feeling a part of the human experience something that should give one comfort, or did re-entering that place compound the misery? He'd sat there in the dark, for a long while, wondering, but it remained a question for which he had no answer.

He didn't know what he would find here. The harried woman behind the triage desk in the ER downstairs had not intended to tell him anything until he flashed his badge, at which point she'd begun a circuitous relay of questions that eventually resulted in him learning that Jozua Everett had been shot, and he was in surgery. More than that, no one knew or was inclined to tell him.

The thought that perhaps he might walk into a situation in which he was not welcome had not really occurred to him through his state of concern until the elevator door had closed on his way to the third floor of the hospital. Now, as the doors slid open with a muted _ding_, inviting him out, he asked himself for the first time why he was really here. Because she'd called him, and he wanted…needed…to know why? It had to have been intentional, for her to go the trouble of finding his number. Or was it because – and his mind had instantly coiled around the possibility- this shooting, so strangely timed, might have something to do with the case he was working?

He stood there, in the corner of the elevator, until the doors, with a hydraulic whine, began to close again, and compulsion made him move. He slipped through into the hallway beyond, abandoning reason for the second time that night.

He found himself in a hallway outside a large, glass-faced room, and he was immediately struck by the comparative silence to the floor below. Gone were the urgent, disembodied voices, the cries of agony, the cacophony of electronics that was the ER. To his right, motion caught his eye as a door shifted quietly open, and a woman in a surgical mask, gloved hands held aloft before her, crossed the hallway and disappeared into a room on the other side.

Glancing through the glass across from him, he saw chairs, upholstered in a calm shade of green. Pressed against the glass beside the door was a low, wooden table covered in magazines, ordered neatly as though no one had looked at them in some time. He walked along the outside, peering in, but saw only two people, a man and a woman, that he didn't recognize.

He sighed, and once again, began to question his logic in coming here. Perhaps Jozua was out of surgery, and they were with him. If so, than surely he would not be wanted. He shook his head and turned back toward the elevator.

Facing the other direction, however, he saw him.

The room, twenty feet or so across, was lined on the back wall with a series of windows recessed into the concrete, creating a large, low shelf at the base. In the far left corner, someone was folded sideways into one of the ledges, head tilted against the window.

Goren might have kept walking, if it hadn't been for the sunglasses.

He backtracked several feet, and opened the door, which he now saw was labeled with a small placard proclaiming it to be the surgery ward waiting room. Subtle details of the figure in the window, as he approached, confirmed his guess. The overlarge sunglasses, though they were black now, were the first clue, and though he wore a hooded sweatshirt pulled low over his forehead, Goren could see the now blue tint of his hair.

River didn't look away from the window as Goren neared him, and the detective couldn't tell from his reflection if he'd even seen him. There were several chairs across from the window, and he lowered himself into one.

"River?" he spoke softly.

Juliana's brother didn't respond. Not a single muscle in his body twitched. There was only the thin, almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest, painfully slow.

Goren spoke his name again, louder this time, but still there was no response. He frowned, and settled back in the chair, glancing behind him, around the room, wondering where Juliana had gone. He looked again at River, and realized that, as much as Juliana had, this strange boy had stirred some deep well of compassion within him, almost personal. He wanted to comfort him, but he didn't have the words, or, really, a source of empathy he thought could be appropriate. What was it like, to have a twin, or to lose one?

The thought crossed his mind only briefly that perhaps, before Juliana returned, he still had time to change his mind about this. About being here. But glancing back at the figure, folded like a child into the windowsill, the thought of abandoning him here now was repulsive in a way he could not have explained.

Behind him, he heard the soft escape of air that was the door opening, and he turned quickly. It wasn't Juliana, but a doctor, or a nurse, who, as he watched, crossed and knelt before the only other occupants of the room.

"In the movies, Detective..."

Goren turned his head quickly back to Juliana's brother, and thought for a moment he'd imagined the quiet words, as the boy's posture hadn't changed. But then he spoke again, still gazing into the night beyond the window.

"…victims of gunshot wounds are often…thrown back. Through windows, or…something equally dramatic. Tell me what is…inaccurate… in that."

Goren stared for a moment at the still form; the question, so out of place, confused him at first. Then his mind ordered itself, considered who was asking the question, and what answer he sought.

"The force on the bullet is equal to…" he paused…thinking, and as he did, River exhaled a silent breath onto the window, and with one finger, traced an "m" and a "v."

"…the force on the… gun, and the shooter."

"The shooter would have to be thrown backward as well," River continued. Then, he drew an equal sign, another series of letters, and dropped his hand absently back to his knee. His lips curved in a thin smile, as though he were pleased with the detective's answer, but then it vanished. "She said Joz didn't even flinch."

Goren leaned forward now, elbows on his knees.

"What happened, River?" he asked, hoping that the urgency in his voice wouldn't frighten this strange kid back into silence.

Instead of speaking, River raised his finger back to the glass, and traced another series of slow, ambiguous symbols, letters. After a moment, he whispered so softly that Goren almost didn't hear him.

"_Chaos."_

Goren frowned, and was about to try another angle, when he heard her voice.

"Robert?"

He turned, frozen, gauging her expression. There was something of that moment at Riker's. Lost, hurt, afraid. He swallowed when he saw the make-shift doctor's scrubs someone had given her, and imagined the blood she had washed off. He gripped the edge of the chair, meaning to rise, to show her he was willing to leave, when she dropped her knee into the chair beside him.

"I'm sorry," she said, pressing her fingers against her eyelids. She looked so tired.

He shook his head, not understanding. "For what?" he asked.

Juliana looked at him, her brow creasing briefly. "Calling you. At four in the morning. I just…" she stopped, and glanced at her brother, then back. She settled into the chair beside him, one leg folded beneath her, and he could not help but be aware how close she was, despite the circumstances.

"Is he ok?"

Juliana's dark eyes searched his, and he wondered what she was thinking. Then she glanced again at her brother, who remained as he had been- still, and silent, perhaps watching them in the reflection of the glass, and perhaps not.

When she turned back, Juliana focused on her hand against the arm of the chair, her fingers digging into the fabric as though she needed the support of something solid before she could speak.

"We don't know yet," she said, almost a whisper. "He was shot twice in the chest- one went through his left lung, the other…I'm not sure." Goren followed her eyes as they shifted to her brother again. The only indication that River was listening to them was the hand resting against his knee, fingers now curled in tightly.

"They stabilized him in the ER, but… he lost a lot of blood. I tried to…" she stopped, scrubbed her hands across her face. "I tried to stop the bleeding, but most of it was internal, and…"

Her words were cut off by River's abrupt movement.

He uncoiled from the ledge like a spring, and stalked across the room, moodily jerking the door open and disappearing into the hallway. Juliana turned her head , watching him, but said nothing.

Goren shifted uncomfortably. "If you need to talk to him, I can…" he began, but stopped when Juliana shook her head and waved one hand.

"I don't know what to say to him," she said, looking back and meeting his eyes. There was moisture there, and he hated it. "I like to believe I help them but…"

As her words faltered, Goren found himself shaking his head. "Juliana… they're devoted to you…"

She seemed to dismiss the comment, closing her eyes briefly. "The first time you spoke to me…you asked me why I became a social worker. I said all that stuff about hope, and…" she waved a hand again, a short, chopping gesture. "I guess, intrinsically, that's all true. But sometimes I think there's a more primal reason for it all."

Goren searched her face, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. "Atonement?" he guessed.

She picked at the fabric lining the back of the chair. "The year our father died," she said quietly, "my brother… River… had just graduated from college, top of his class. Got his degree in physics, just like our dad. Except dad never paid any attention- not even then. So after he died…" she paused, turned toward the door. "Riv just…gave up. He never told me if the overdose was intentional, but..."

Goren sat back in his chair. "You can't blame yourself for that…" he said, and the conviction in his own words coursed sharply through him.

She looked at him now, and a slow, faint smile touched her lips. "Can't blame myself for not being enough?"

She had him there. He would have smiled at her deft manipulation if circumstances had been any different.

Juliana turned away, however, and stared for a moment through the window. Outside, the night had begun to pale- a muted bluish gray replacing the black.

"Sometimes I have to ask myself why I bother," she said, her voice musing, but not in a way that seemed self-pitying. Only curious, and for some reason, that bothered him more than if she'd suddenly burst into tears. Perhaps, though, that was because it was so easy for him to understand the numbness, and it was the thing he hated the most.

"I kept thinking, tonight," she went on, "with that gun in my face…_has this all been a waste of time?_ Have I been looking for a way to help people, while in the great scheme of things, there is none?"

"You never told me what happened," he reminded her gently, disliking her melancholy mood. It didn't suit her, though it was more than merited.

She shrugged, still looking out the window. "Someone saw an opportunity get out of a sixty-thousand dollar car. I guess it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that." Her tone was bitter.

What he wanted to say was "_are you sure_?" He was a detective, and although he had no illusions about the basic unfair nature of life, this particular coincidence, align with the rash of them that had come before, was hard to dismiss.

The opportunity to find a graceful way to broach the issue was lost, however, when the door of the waiting room opened once more. They both turned, and Goren felt a sudden knot of anticipation when he saw that it was not River, but a man, surgeon's mask dangling loose about his neck. He glanced at Juliana, and his heart ached for her. The doctor had not even entirely crossed the room, but the sight of him had brought tears to her eyes. She stood, and on impulse, he stood with her.

Goren imagined, watching the other man as he stopped before them, that he could read the disposition of his report before he spoke, but he held his breath nonetheless.

"Juliana," the doctor said, flashing Goren a tired glance and affording him a short nod before touching Juliana gently on the shoulder. "We've removed both bullets, repaired the damage to his lung. The second one missed his heart by a…" The doctor paused, patted her shoulder, and smiled thinly. "I can let you in to see him. Briefly."

Juliana's only response, at first, was to curl the fingers of one hand tightly into her palm, and sway weakly. Then she added: "So he's…"

"Looking good," the doctor added. "He's still out, but… if you want…" He gestured toward the door. Juliana took a step forward and stopped, looking at Goren.

"Robert, I…"

"Go," he interrupted. The doctor was already moving across the room again, leaving her behind. "I have to get to work anyway."

She stood there for a moment, looking at him, then she took a step closer.

"You know...I like the fact that ...I can say I'm not at all surprised you came," she said.

He looked at the floor and nodded shortly. "I'll keep up with what happens with whoever pulls this case," he said. "And if I can do anything else..." He smiled weakly. "…you have my number."

He glanced up, glad for the quick spark of amusement in her eyes. Juliana smiled, and held out her hand. He took it, expecting a quick, departing pressure, but instead, she folded her other hand over his and stepped closer to him- close enough that he could feel the warmth of her figure against his chest. Balancing her inferior height, she brought her face to his, and he was stirred by the impression that she meant to kiss him. Instead, however, he felt only the smooth, cool brush of her cheek against his, lingering for the just briefest moment.

"Thank you, Robert," she whispered.

His other hand moved, to touch her, but she drew away, releasing his hand with one last smile before she followed the doctor from the room.

-


	19. A Late Frost Part III

**-**

Goren had told her he needed to get to work, but when he left the hospital, it was still shy of five-thirty in the morning, and he knew better than to expect Eames in at that hour. It hadn't escaped his notice that the hospital where Jozua Everett had been admitted was only three miles or so from Juliana's Rochdale apartment complex, and on a hunch, he drove in that direction.

His assumption turned out to be correct. He could see the revolving red of flashing lights through the bisecting corridors as he rounded the south side of the building. The apartment complex itself was a wide, blocky horseshoe, an expanse of brown grass and mud at its center that was, in warmer seasons, a park. Turning onto the street that faced the park, he was stopped abruptly before a barricade: orange and white cones pressed into the dirty slush across the road, an ambulance, overheads dimmed and back door standing open, a dark car with a single, blue strobe on the dashboard, parked at an angle on the wrong side of the street.

He edged his own car as near to the curb as he could manage, and stepped out into a pre-dawn circus. Curious people, likely residents of the apartment complex, braved the cold in various states of un-dress and huddled together on the sidewalk behind the barricade. He clipped his badge to his lapel, and slipped through the crowd.

Floodlights had been set up in the park, and he could see CSU techs in the mud, making casts. A uniformed officer stood in the open doorway of an apartment, holding a notepad and talking as a man in a robe gestured dramatically toward the park. The gate of the park, its fine, wrought-iron workmanship seeming out of place here, stood open, the mud at the base churned. Less than fifteen feet from the gate was a silver Lexus, pulled to the curb facing the wrong direction, with the driver's side door open across the sidewalk.

No one was near the car, so he bypassed the gate and leaned down to look inside it. Even if he'd had some doubt that the car- as expensive as some houses- had been Jozua's, it would have been allayed by the glass partition between the front and the spacious rear seat. The keys were still in the ignition.

"_Hey!_"

He straightened abruptly at the shrill voice, and turned to see a woman walking quickly toward him from the corner of the building. Petite, with short, blonde hair and an elfin face, she seemed far too young for the badge and the gun at her waist. He saw her eyes flick to his lapel, then to his face as she approached.

"Who, what, why?" she asked shortly, her thick New York accent edged with impatience. She held two hands out, one toward Goren, one toward the car.

Goren blinked. "Robert Goren," he said. "Major Case. I know the… victim."

The woman eyed him suspiciously, glanced behind her at the corner of the building, then back. "You got ID?" she asked.

His badge was good enough for most people, but this wasn't his crime scene, so he handed it over without remark.

"You said you know the victim?" she asked as she examined his photograph. "Which one?" She handed the ID back to him, apparently satisfied, and rested her gloved hands on her hips.

Goren's eyes shifted back to the car, with the glass partition and the open driver's side door.

"Jozua Everett," he said. "And his sister. This is her place."

The woman nodded and grasped the door of the car, pushing it closed. Goren barely moved out of the way in time.

"Yep," she said. "We figure the perp made your lawyer for a quick score, followed he and the girl into that corridor over there outta sight of the car," she jerked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction she had come, "and held 'em up."

Abruptly, she spun away and started walking, and when she turned at the waist and titled her head at him, he started after her. He caught up to her and she continued her explanation.

"What this fella didn't count on is that our rich boy's driver was a little two in one package." There was a hint of wry amusement in her tone.

"Two in one…" Goren repeated, but realization dawned before she could explain. "A bodyguard." He would have found it amusing, given other circumstances.

The detective nodded. "Looks that way." She held a hand across her chest as they walked. "I'm Natalie Brigham, by the way. Robbery Homicide."

He took her hand, the strength of her grip surprising him. They rounded the corner of the building's north wing, and Goren could see a gurney standing on the sidewalk. A woman in an ME's jacket was drawing a zipper along the thick black body bag.

"He's dead?" Goren said, immediately wondering why Juliana had failed to mention that.

"As a door nail," Brigham said grimly. "Took two to the chest, one to the center forehead."

As they neared the body, another man stepped from around the corner. He was easily as tall as Goren, and twice as broad, his face set into a scowl as he chewed on the end of an uncut cigar. He saw the two of them approaching, his expression bland when he looked at Brigham, but darkening when he saw Goren.

"What is this shit?" he asked around the cigar, nodding at Goren.

"Take that thing outta your mouth, why doncha?" Brigham snapped fiercely, and Goren almost laughed. The woman was not quite half this man's size.

"The ox is my partner," she said, casting Goren an apologetic smirk.

"Grant Weaver," he said gruffly, moving the cigar to the other side of his mouth and glaring at Goren's badge before jabbing a finger at his partner. "I told you this one wasn't gonna be a simple open-shut." He looked back at Goren. "Who is this kid to rain you Major Case clowns down on us?"

Goren couldn't remember a time when territoriality from other detectives had ever offended him. The FBI, though… that was another story. He couldn't blame Weaver, or any other detectives overstepped by Major Case, for their irritability.

He shook his head, and held his hands up, placating. "I'm not here to get in your way," he assured the bigger detective, who folded his arms and glowered, unconvinced. "I just came from the hospital... I've been working a case involving his.. the other victim's sister."

Both Grant and Brigham exchanged a look. The woman glanced at the body bag as the ME rolled it past her down the sidewalk. "You think the two might be related?"

At least she was quick. Goren shrugged. "The thought occurred to me."

She frowned, then shouldered past her partner, motioning Goren to follow her. She led him down the corridor, past a vending machine, to the foot of a staircase, and he could feel Weaver's bulky presence close behind.

"This is what I don't get," she said, kneeling down. She picked up a leather wallet, opened it, and flipped through a progression of hundred dollar bills with her gloved fingers. "There's almost a thousand bucks in here. And credit cards. Cards from three different banks." She sat the wallet aside, picked up a watch. "This," she said, brandishing it at him, "is a Rolex. Pure silver, mother of pearl interior plating… easily worth eight grand."

Goren had seen that particular watch several times, and had the sudden compulsion that he needed to take it, to return it. His eyes traveled up the staircase then, and he saw the box he knew Eames had put Juliana's things in to return to her. A sudden stab of worry for his partner made him pull his cell phone out, and he sent a quick text to her. When he looked up from the phone, he found Brigham's icy blue eyes regarding him intently, swinging the watch by its band on one finger.

"So what I figure is this," she said, still kneeling before the staircase. "Brother is walking his sister up, the perp surprised them at the foot of the staircase." She pointed toward the far mouth of the corridor. "Driver comes blazin' round the corner to save the day, but doesn't have a clear shot." She folded all but her index finger and thumb inward, a mock gun. "He's a sitting duck."

Weaver, silent until that moment, nodded, and pointed toward the wall to Goren's back right. "We found a bullet from his gun buried in that sign. We think he got at least two shots off, and we're looking for the other. Maybe in the perp."

Brigham laid the watch gently back on the concrete beside the wallet, and stood up. "What we do know is that the action started here, and ended out there." She started walking again, past the staircase, and into the floodlit central space. "There're three distinct sets of footprints, all leading from here. The first two sets, one big, one little, crisscross all the way to the gate." Now she pointed to another area, fifteen feet or so straight from the end of the corridor. "The other set leaves from here, stops there, and then moves away at a diagonal toward the south side of the building."

Goren frowned, watching the CSU techs who were inching along the partly frozen ground in the direction Brigham had pointed. Then he glanced at the gate.

"So they ran," he said, wishing he'd had more time to talk to Juliana about this all. "And…the perp… left the corridor, after he killed the bodyguard, and stopped there and fired at them."

Brigham folded her arms. "Why would he do that?" she said.

"If the motive was robbery," Goren voiced her unspoken thought.

"A hit?" It was Weaver. "What we do have on this lawyer says he's mobbed up."

Goren shook his head, but realized the idea held at least some merit. "Mob hits are usually planned much better than this, though. It could still be robbery… the perp wasn't expecting the bodyguard, the shots scared him, he ran…" _and left ten thousand dollars lying on the ground with only a dead man between he and an exit onto a deserted street._ It didn't sound right even as he said it, and the look on Brigham's face said it didn't jive with her either.

"You said you just came from the hospital," Weaver said. "We got one witness or two?"

"He's out of surgery, looking good." Goren realized as he said it that he was glad. At that moment, his cell phone beeped, and he read with relief Eames' message. She was home, in bed, wondering what was wrong with him. He took a moment to ease her mind, then glanced back at the two detectives.

"We might want to keep each in the loop about this one," he said grimly.

Brigham chewed the inside of one cheek briefly, her eyes wary. "If we're not looking at a random street crime, or a mob hit… which I don't buy either… then what might we be looking at?"

Goren found himself surprised that neither of them seemed to have made the connection between their victims and the highly publicized case. But then, there had been weeks when he himself had not found the time to even turn on a television, much less watch the news.

"The woman, Juliana Everett, was a… former suspect in that serial murder case. The one with the kids."

He saw immediate realization dawn on Brigham's face. Weaver took the cigar out of his mouth.

"It could have been someone after her," the big detective mused aloud. "Someone who doesn't think she's innocent."

Goren nodded slowly, his forehead creasing.

Brigham frowned. "You think there might be even more to it than that?"

Goren said nothing, but stared at the CSU techs preparing the casts of footprints. Brigham followed his gaze.

"Men's size nine," she offered.

So there was timing, and a shoe size. There had been one footprint in the mud of the Carmichael's back yard, size nine.

Weaver's cell phone jangled, and he told his partner: "The hospital. Our vic's conscious."

Goren breathed a sigh.

He shook their hands, exchanged a few more words, received their promise to keep him updated, and they were gone. He felt a dragging sympathy for Juliana, who had, by this point, probably had all she cared to of detectives and their questions. As he returned to his car, he found himself replaying his conversation in the hospital with her. She had seemed convinced that there was nothing sinister here, and he realized suddenly that the conversation he'd just had with the two detectives on their way to interview her would color their interrogation, if it was not repeated directly. There was a high likelihood that he was over-thinking this one; that all three of them were, and he disliked the idea of adding paranoia to her burden. There was, however, the barest possibility that she _had_ been a target, and that she needed to watch her back.

Either way, he would only rest when, whatever the identity of the serial killer, he was behind bars, or dead.

-


	20. Where The Earth Is Fallow

**Friday, January 8th, 2008**

**One Police Plaza 11:15 A.M**.

After her partner's unexpected text message at five forty-five in the morning, Alex Eames had not been able to go back to sleep. Truthfully, she had not gotten much in the way of rest at all; the coffee she'd forced herself to drink the night before, courtesy of Juliana's bizarre brother, had left her so wired she'd had to clean her entire house when she got home to keep from combusting with unspent energy. She'd tossed and turned and finally drifted off sometime after three, only to be startled into alertness by Goren, wanting to know where she was. After lying there watching the clock for a half hour, she'd given up, taken a shower, and headed downtown.

Coincidently, she'd managed to arrive at One Police Plaza at the same time as her partner. He'd held the elevator for her, and the moment she'd stepped inside, with a "_Guess what I found out?"_and a "_You're never going to believe this one!"_ they'd both begun talking at once. She'd listened with appalled wonder at Goren's recounting of Jozua Everett's shooting, and of what he'd seen at the crime scene, and then Goren had listened with rapt interest as she repeated what she'd learned from Juliana the night before.

They'd spent the rest of the morning digging.

- - -

Eames glanced up from the computer as a paper bag materialized on the corner of her desk. Goren settled into the chair across from her, unfolding another bag. He held a Diet Coke out to her.

She reached for it, and he pulled it back.

"You sure you don't want some coffee? I'll brew some."

Eames snatched the soda, caffeine free like she'd commanded, and tried to look severe. "Never again," she said.

Goren smiled. "Right," he said as she handed him his sandwich. Unwrapping it, he nodded toward the computer. "Anything?"

Eames removed a tomato from her turkey on rye, and shrugged. "According to the system, Nathan James Harris was still listed as a patrol officer for the two-three until 2005. After that, he's on file as being employed by Richard S. Grossley Middle School."

"But Juliana said he was at Frederick Douglass in 2004," Goren said.

Eames shrugged again and shook her head. "We'll have to ask him when he gets here."

Goren said nothing, focusing on his sandwich for a moment, eyes distant. The fact that Nathan Harris had failed to mention that he had worked at the school that not one, but two, victims had attended, was suspicious in itself. Goren had suggested, and Eames had agreed, that they needed to talk to him on their own turf ; they were both conscious of being wrong, after what had happened with Juliana, and having Harris meet them at One Police Plaza served a dual purpose. It kept their inquiries from tarnishing his reputation with his co-workers, as it undoubtedly would, and it put them in control.

Goren had called the SRO that morning, and asked for his help. He'd asked him to bring any records he had from his summer programs, so they could compare notes. Harris had been happy to oblige, had asked no questions, and had told Goren to expect him after noon.

Eames took a sip of her soda and glanced at the clock. Half an hour until then, and all they had on him was the curious discrepancy between his word, and the word of a former suspect.

"You know…" she began, but stopped when she saw Goren's eyes focus on something behind her. She turned, thinking it was Harris, but instead she saw the captain, crossing the room with a manila folder in his hand.

Ross stopped at their desk, and held the folder aloft before Goren. "I can't guarantee this isn't going to get back to him," he said.

Goren set his sandwich aside and brushed his hands off, took the file from Ross and flipped it open.

Ross helped himself to a chip from Eames lunch, and nodded toward the file. "I don't need to remind you how carefully you need to step with cops, do I?"

Goren's expression, a sharp glance and a raised eyebrow, mirrored her own, and Ross held up his hands and retreated to his office.

Eames sighed, and balled up the trash from her sandwich. Ross didn't need to remind them of anything. There was nothing they were more conscious of now, after the fiasco with Juliana, than the need for discrepancy, and the tight wire that was investigating a cop for any crime, especially one as brutal and sensitive as this one. Both she and her partner were aware as well that, if they had come across the real killer here, one wrong word could send him underground. There was a point, the closer the truth was, when investigation became a game, a dance of misdirection and deception, and Eames had a feeling that it might have begun the afternoon before.

"Here's something interesting," Goren said, laying the file down before him and pointing at one page. Eames leaned forward.

"In 2001 Harris was named in a lawsuit for using excessive physical force against a suspect in a domestic violence dispute." He glanced pointedly at Eames and then back to the page. "The lawsuit was dropped after witness testimony by both the wife and young son of the suspect that the suspect attacked Harris first."

Eames folded her arms against the table and frowned. "But it's in his permanent record? What's he doing working with kids?"

Goren shook his head. "Says here he requested a transfer to youth services… two months after that, and went with commendation."

"I don't suppose it says anything in there about the fact that he was abused by his father as a child," Eames asked wryly.

Goren flipped several pages. "One living relative listed," he said. "Norman Michael Harris, Jr."

Eames was already keying the name into the computer. The database responded instantly, and she found herself looking into a face not unlike Harris's. Broader of shoulder, with lighter, thinning hair, but unmistakably related. "He's got a record a mile long," Eames said. "Domestic violence, mostly. Other beefs going back to the early seventies." She scrolled, frowned. "This is interesting. Until December 2003 there is at least…one…incident on record since 1972. Then nothing, at all, for the last four years."

Goren leaned across the desk and she rotated the computer so that he could see it. He stared in silence at the display for a moment, then pointed at the screen. "The complainants.. in the domestic violence dispute."

Eames tapped a few more keys. "He has a wife in the East Village… Sherry Harris. And a son, Patrick."

Goren looked away from the screen, focusing on his partner's face. She could almost hear his mind working.

"We need to find out how this man is related to Harris. And why he drops off the radar in 2003."

Eames nodded slowly. "Maybe he found God," she smirked.

Goren shrugged. "But he's a career criminal," he said, seeming to miss the sarcasm in her voice. "We need to find out what happened to him."

Eames thought back to what Goren had said the Tuesday before about their serial killer. He had suggested that the growing elaboration in the killings might have served a purpose for the killer: to justify something that began with a spontaneous incident, an act of singular rage. But the man she'd met at JHS 008 had seemed mild, and his concern for the children he'd introduced them to had seemed genuine to her. The thought that the man who'd nearly cut the head from a thirteen year old boy might be the same man charged with the safety of hundreds more, sent a chill through her. If there was one thing she hated about her job, it was the duplicity of sociopaths. Most criminals were straightforward, their motives easy to understand, but there were those few that could look a person in the face and lie with truth in their eyes. She had wondered more than once what made her partner so good as seeing through such deception, and she had a feeling he asked himself the same question.

Goren had leaned back in his chair, ankle on his knee, with the open file propped against his leg. She resisted the urge to tell him to finish his sandwich, worrying she had been enough of a mother-hen lately, which was not her style. If anything, her partner had seemed in a better mood today. He actually looked as though he'd gotten some sleep the night before, despite the fact that he'd been awake before six. She recalled his animated account of the crime scene, hearing in his voice the growing suspicion that something wasn't right with it all. But she also recalled the way there'd been a light, a smile, in his eyes when she'd asked how he'd found out about Jozua, and he'd told her that Juliana had called him. Eames had a feeling that there was more to it than just a phone call, but he had seemed unwilling to expound on the matter and she didn't press it. Whatever was behind it- absolution or vindication- Goren's energy and the hint of his old enthusiasm was infecting, and heartening.

"I can have Vasquez put some feelers out for anything on Norman Harris while we're talking to… the other Harris," she said, and Goren nodded without looking up. She picked up the phone, on a whim suggested to Vasquez he treat Norman Harris like a missing person, which made her partner smile, and was replacing the receiver when she saw him.

Nathan Harris, dressed in uniform, was stepping from the elevator, a folder tucked beneath his arm.

"Show time," Eames said softly, covering the words by draining her Diet Coke.

Goren, without skipping a beat, closed the file and tossed it on his desk, then he rearranged his mostly uneaten lunch over it. He glanced over his shoulder, and Eames saw Harris catch his eye and lift a hand in greeting. Eames shot a glance at Interview One, where her partner had turned on the television and tuned it to the news earlier that morning when he'd gotten off the phone with Harris. For the first time in her career she was glad of the incessant drabble of Faith Yancy; the reporter had seized upon the story of the mysterious New York child killer, and had talked of little else during the afternoon. She was having a field day with the Everett siblings' - the former murder suspect and the lowlife lawyer who'd helped free her- near brush with death, and Goren intended to have it on while they talked to Harris. It was a rash ploy, but he'd pulled others like it with surprising results.

Nate Harris crossed the room and as Goren rose from his chair to greet him, Eames followed suit. She forced herself to flash him a genuine smile.

"I'll tell you what," Harris said, shaking Goren's hand and smiling. "It's good to have an excuse to get away from the cafeteria at lunch time."

"I bet," Eames said, although she had the instant impression of something strained in Harris' good humor. She avoided a handshake under the pretense of showing Harris to the glass faced interview room. Walking backward several paces, she caught Goren's eyes on the TV and she smiled again at Harris. "I was always afraid of mystery meat."

Harris didn't respond, however, reeled in instantly by the television. He slipped past Eames into the room as she held the door open for Goren, who raised an eyebrow at his partner as he followed Harris inside. Faith Yancy's voice spoke from her screen visage.

"_Reports tell us that notorious criminal defense attorney and real estate tycoon Jozua VanAshton Everett is conscious and doing well after an incident leaving him near death from two bullet wounds early this morning. Early speculation on the motive suggests robbery, but what's the real truth behind this? Come on people, this a man in league with the mob. He puts child killers back on the street. Surely the world…" _

The diatribe ended abruptly, the word _mute_ flashing briefly in the corner of the screen, and Eames saw Harris, previously mesmerized by the report, look sharply around. Goren stood on the other side of the table, the remote in his hand.

"Sorry about that," he said, levering himself into a seat and dropping the remote on the table. "We've been listening to this all morning."

Harris glanced once more at the television, then at Eames, and laid the folder he'd brought with him carefully on the table. He sat down, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out. "Mind if I smoke?" he asked.

Eames and Goren looked at each other, then Goren shrugged, and leaned behind him to pull a cup from the water dispenser for Harris to use as an ashtray. The SRO, not looking at either of them, lit his cigarette, a cloying, sweet aroma of cloves accompanying it, and shook his head slowly as he took a long pull.

"It's a shame," he said, his words high as he held the smoke in his lungs. "that whoever shot that son of a bitch wasn't a better aim." He looked at Goren then, and blew the smoke out slowly into the air above them.

Eames saw Goren's expression darken almost imperceptibly- a slight narrowing of the eyes, and the way his fingers pressed into the tabletop- and she stepped in to give him a moment. She had suspected ever since that visit of his to Jozua's office that her partner had taken a liking to the lawyer, for whatever reason.

" So.. did you know him?" she asked.

Harris took another drag of his cigarette and shook his head. "Not any better than the other decent folks of New York City. People like him are the antithesis of…" he paused, blew the smoke out. "…people like us."

"You mean… honest, compassionate, dedicated to protecting the innocent?" Goren said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.

"Exactly," Harris said. "That bastard and others like him undo all the good law enforcement accomplishes." He snubbed his cigarette out in the paper cup. Eames searched his expression, but found she couldn't take his vehement dislike of Jozua Everett as evidence of anything sinister. A vast majority of law enforcement officers loathed defense attorneys, including, for the most part, herself.

Harris, his right hand tucked in his lap, dragged the file he'd brought across the table with the tips of his fingers.

"This is a record of all the volunteers, and all the personnel associated with my program back to 2004," he said. "I'm not sure why you think it might be useful." There was the lilt of a question in his voice.

Goren pulled the file toward himself, and opened it. As he glanced through it, Eames said:

"You told us yesterday that you thought you might have remembered one of the boys. Do you think that might have been from your position at Frederick Douglas Academy?" She phrased it casually.

Harris looked at her. "Position?" he repeated. For a moment Eames thought he was going to deny it, but instead he smiled indulgently. "Frederick Douglass wasn't an actual, paid position. It was more of a… study."

"Ah, that's right," Eames said, nodding. "I heard about that. Some collaboration with Columbia… on the effectiveness of law enforcement in schools?"

Harris' brow creased very slightly, then he cleared his throat and nodded. "Columbia, yes."

"It turns out," Goren picked up, still gazing at the lists Harris had provided, "that both Devon Eldridge and Damien Moore went to that school."

Harris' dark, blue eyes held Eames' own for a moment longer as though he hadn't heard Goren, then he turned slowly. "And Brendan and Kieran were at Richard Grossley. What a striking coincidence." Then he leaned forward, pointing at the list before Goren.

"So… what are you thinking with this?" Gone was the thick, tired demeanor, replaced by what seemed genuine enthusiasm. Eames felt her lips curve under in a frown. Was this guy playing with _them_?

Goren looked up as well, and Eames, knowing him as she did, could tell that his expression was composed, carefully.

Goren glanced back at the file, folding another page over. "Uh… there has to be some connection," he said, his tone weary. "We thought it was…" he sighed, and propped his chin wearily in his hand.

Eames watched Harris react to her partner, and affected a similar expression of confused frustration. Goren was playing "dumb cop," a routine that had proven successful so many times in the past with superior egos.

Harris was nodding. "You thought it was that… social worker. She's about as useless as her brother, though, I see."

Eames with instantly impressed with Goren's composure. He offered Harris a thoughtful look in response. "You mean… she could have helped those boys? The killer wouldn't have had to… do what he did, if she'd…done her job?"

Harris regarded Goren for a moment, cocked his head. Eames was struck then by the way his watery, overlarge blue eyes seemed so young, compared to most of his features. His close cropped brown hair was feathered with gray, his tan skin weathered, but he was narrow, wiry, like a teenager. There was, however, no energy about him.

"Do you think…" Harris said, curiosity unmistakable in his tone, "that he _had_ to do it?"

Goren frowned, and Eames knew instantly that he was unsure how to answer the question. If this was the killer, telling him what he wanted to hear was justification. If not, it was divulging more information than he should to a third party.

"I think the killer believes it, yes," Goren said, glancing at Eames. She realized with sudden, unnerving certainty that Harris made her partner nervous. It wasn't something she was used to, and didn't know how to respond.

She stood up, moved to the water dispenser, and poured a cup, offering it to Harris. He took it tentatively, his eyes darting between both detectives while Eames poured a cup for herself. She took a sip of it as she returned to her seat, nodding to herself.

"You know what," she said, lending force to her tone, "I've been thinking about these murders. I've been on the job for years, seen a lot of bad apples. There's some you can't save. I hope this doesn't leave this room…" she glanced at Goren, who sat back slowly in his seat and looked at the table, and then she glanced at Harris, who's eyes were wide, inquisitive. "…but what I see here are kids going down the same path as their parents. Kids too far gone to do anything for."

For a moment she thought Harris was going to say something, respond in some way that they could use. Instead, the look of childish interest slowly receded from his eyes and he smiled, coldly. "I suppose the entire field of social work is evidence of that, isn't it?"

Eames swallowed, unnerved by Harris' oscillating demeanor. The day before he had been kind, facilitating, passionate about helping children. Today he was cold, distant, drained. Once again, she wondered how much she read into his attitude as a result of her own suspicion.

"Trying to help people that don't want to helped can be very taxing," Goren said, and Eames glanced at him, her brow furrowing at the genuine note of sympathy that she heard in his voice.

Harris' eyes focused on the folder under Goren's hand, and he extracted the box of cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit another, inhaling deeply before he responded, a smile on his lips.

"I guess I'm being too hard on social workers. It's just that…" he exhaled a cloud of smoke. "I've known several in my time."

Eames sensed Goren's shoulders tense as though he meant to look at her and stopped himself.

"You mean," she said, taking a casual sip of her water, "that one came to your home when you were a child?"

Harris's eyes were distant, focusing on the table. "Wasn't this…particular social worker involved with both kids?" He ignored Eames' question, looked at them both with curious, eager eyes. "Did you check to see if she ever had any involvement with those Carmichael kids?"

"Well," Goren said, shuffling the papers beneath his hands, still playing dumb. "I mean… she was… " he looked at Eames. ".. in prison when those murders took place."

Harris, his cigarette hanging limply between his lips, shrugged dramatically, hands splayed beside him. He winced, dropped his right arm. "Don't you think her brother could arrange something like that?" he said, his voice tense.

Eames glanced at Goren, who was looking intently at Harris, and then back at the SRO. "We don't think he was involved," she said carefully.

Harris, jabbing his half-finished cigarette into the same paper cup, glanced at her, and smiled.

"No?" He looked at his watch, stood, and glanced at the television for a moment Eames and Goren allowed him to keep in silence. Several images flashed across the screen: the courthouse steps, on the day Juliana had been released. The flashing lights outside Juliana's Rochdale apartment. At last he turned back.

"In the meantime," he said, his brow creased, angry, "children are dying."

Before either of them could say anything, he left, taking his unfinished cup of water, and the cup with the disposed cigarettes with him.

As the glass door inched silently shut, Eames looked slowly toward her partner, only to find him already looking at her.

"Did you see the dirt under his fingernails?" he asked.

-


	21. The Suggestion Of An Early Spring

**Saturday, January 9th, 2008, 9:45 P.M.**

**Midtown Manhattan **

**Robert Goren**

Saturday was an enforced vacation.

Ross, not quite on board with Goren and Eames' budding new theory about Harris and his as yet missing brother, had listened with a disapproving frown to Goren speaking of hypothetical murders and gardening, and had promptly told his detectives to take the weekend off. Their first real break in weeks. In reality, there was little more they could do until their search for Norman Harris Jr. ran its course, short of descending on Harris's sister in law and nephew, and that was a branding step neither Goren nor Eames was prepared to make with their limited knowledge.

Even with a precedent such as the unfortunate tragedy of Juliana's false imprisonment, stepping lightly near potential child killers was not something Goren found easy. He'd not accepted the order to take the day off with initial grace, but his partner had suggested that the short break would be good for them both, allow them to return to the office on Monday with a fresh perspective. Either way, Ross was not to be argued with.

Goren and Eames had parted ways Friday, the latter eliciting a promise from her partner to get some rest. Though he could tell at the time that Eames had wanted to say more, she'd refrained, and Goren wondered why. He realized that the extra concern she'd shown toward him lately was indicative of her declining confidence in his stability, but it had, in some ways, helped. She hadn't been obligated, even though they'd been partners for years, to be so gentle with his erratic behavior, so patient with his clinging despondency. The almost nurturing response she'd shown toward his personal trials, from his mother's death to his guilt over his recent mistakes in judgment, for the first time felt like the hand of friendship, instead of the shackles of obligation. At home Friday night, lying in bed waiting for sleep to come, it had startled him to realize that he had spent years repelling her, afraid that any appearance of amiability- the occasional jokes, the shared stories- was merely a professional rapport.

It had never occurred to him to imagine that Alex Eames actually liked him, the real Robert Goren, and that she cared about his well-being.

It was a strange sensation, because it meant that he had earned it.

He had immense respect for his partner, for her level-headedness, her strength of character, her candidness. When they'd first begun working together, things had been different between them. His unorthodox manner had not settled easily with her until more than a year later, when he knew that he'd earned her respect as an investigator, as an ethical person. But he'd not imagined it extended beyond that, especially since he made no effort to explore those boundaries.

Now, as he looked back on the recent past, he realized his partner had stood by him through his pained irrationality from the beginning of his mother's illness. She'd defended him to Ross, rather than suggest he needed to be evaluated, and he knew now that she'd done that because she thought it was best for _him_- she'd weighed possibilities and decided he needed his job, which would not have been a hard conclusion to come to after eight years together, and then she'd taken on the responsibility of watching out for him. She'd come to his mother's funeral, stood beside him silently, and at the time it had made him feel worse, wrapped in his own misery, to think that she was there out of obligation. He could, however, see it in a different light now. Her actions over the past several weeks- her evident worry, her attempts to talk to him about the despair that plagued him, her refusal to let him go home alone on perhaps the lowest night of his life… professional solidarity did not warrant these things.

If Alex Eames cared for him, thought of him as more than just her partner, then he knew it must be because she had seen him for what he was, and found it deserving of her friendship.

It was a bulwark against despair. Tentative, but real.

He'd fallen asleep before midnight on Friday, and hadn't woken until after twelve on Saturday. He'd spent the rest of the day doing what he'd promised Eames he would do- if not resting in the literal sense of the word, he'd forced his mind to relax, finding a succession of menial, brainless tasks to keep himself from thinking about work, and about the past.

It had been cloudy since the evening before, so he had taken the book Juliana had given him (it seemed months ago now, that day in her office), and curled into his chair and read. It was the first time he'd read a book for pleasure since the advent of his mother's cancer, and he'd found himself entirely, happily absorbed until well past three in the afternoon. When thirst had finally coaxed him from the chair, the view through the kitchen window had cleared, and the powder blue January sky had called him outside.

He'd left his apartment with no clear idea of where he was going, but an hour later had found himself in Central Park, where he'd spent the remainder of the daylight walking beneath the trees. There was a certain clarity about nature, a neutrality and consistency that when he was calm, open to it, lent him a sense of peace. It reminded him that all the problems that he faced were, in truth, only transient, miniscule in the face of time. It was, however, a hard feeling to hold onto in the city, at a crime scene, standing over the body of a murdered child, knowing the answers he sought were someone's salvation. It was a difficult burden.

Despite that, it was good... to be able to breathe, even if only for the last moments of one winter day.

After night had fallen, he'd turned back for the subway, and as the train had wound its way back to Queens, he'd thought about Juliana. Not for the first time that day, or the day before, but this time it was pervasive. He'd not allowed himself to think that that moment in the hospital had meant anything; in fact, he'd refused to consider that he even wanted it to, and had tried to push his concern for her away, knowing that connections formed amid tragedies were rarely reliable. Finally, however, he'd told himself he was being a fool, childish, and so he'd taken out his cell phone and dialed the number he'd saved the night before.

She'd picked up on the first ring.

It was almost ten now, and the night was clear, the air crisp and still. He'd not been to Midtown in more than a year, and not on a Saturday night in much longer. As he walked along the sidewalk, he glanced at the buildings, looking for the sign. _The Birdhouse_, she'd called it. It was a jazz club; he'd have guessed that even if she hadn't told him.

He curled his gloved fingers tightly in the pockets of his coat, skirted a couple pausing to argue over a map, and wondered what the nature of this approaching rendezvous really was. What either of them, he or Juliana, intended for it to be.

She had answered on the first ring, and sounded relieved that he'd called. He'd asked after her brother, but she'd only laughed- that same, harassed , high laugh he remembered from that night at Riker's- and told him that she needed a drink. He hadn't even actually considered refusing her offer to meet her somewhere… not until he'd finished shaving and was browsing his wardrobe for a nicer suit than his usual work attire. It was then that he realized the thought of seeing her again excited him more than he felt it should have.

And yet he was here.

The club was on the corner of the street, proclaimed by a white and black sign against the grey brick of a squat building. Stairs led below street level, to an open door, the sound of a piano spilling onto the sidewalk. A man reclined there on a stool wedged to one side of the door, pin-striped suit and vintage felt fedora tilted over one black-lined eye. He took the ten-dollar bill Goren handed him for the cover charge while biting his bottom lip against a grin, and the wink he offered as the detective slipped past him into the club did not go amiss. Goren wondered briefly if he was in the right place, that this was the Bird_house_ and not the Bird_cage_.

The interior hallway was paneled in wood, painted a dull black, and lined with antique, cast iron wall sconces. He followed the sound of the piano into the heart of the building, once pressing himself against the wall to let someone pass, and then through the wide, arched opening at the right end of the hallway.

He'd been to jazz clubs before- in fact, it was one of his favorite genres for live performances- but he'd not been to one quite like this. The room looked as though it was trapped in some strange amalgamation of the late 40's and early 70's. A disco ball hung above the black lacquered bar on the far side, framed by art deco black shelves lined with bottles of liquor and wine that were themselves a miasma of glittering reflections. The thousands of tiny mirrors of the rotating disco ball caught the red glow of the recessed lighting in the ceiling and sent it rotating across the surface of the white grand piano, the sole instrument on the raised platform behind the bar. There was a lower stage left of the bar, where a solitary man kneeled behind a drum kit.

He glanced around the rest of the room, still hovering just inside the doorway. The place was larger than it looked from outside, and he estimated around forty, fifty people scattered among the mismatched chairs and couches, which themselves seemed to possess no apparent theme or arrangement other than that they left a square of empty space before the stage.

He felt a hand on his arm, and he turned his head.

"Hi," she said, smiling brightly, and his breath caught in his throat. For the briefest moment, all he could do was stare.

This was a side of Juliana Everett he'd not seen. Her black dress was simple, but the effect of it was not. She wore her hair down, as he'd always seen it, but she'd dusted her eyes with a dark shadow, making them, if possible, that much more mesmeric.

In the face of his frank stare, she bit her lip against a grin and glanced at the floor. "Sorry about the cover charge," she said, and he found himself smiling at the evident color in her cheeks. He supposed he could have been embarrassed himself, but he wasn't.

He nodded toward the stage. "There's a band?" he asked.

She glanced quickly at him, then back at the stage and nodded, her smile eager. "Yeah," she said. "Ulu. Improv jazz fusion. Fantastic stuff. I figured this place would be safe, since everyone will paying attention to them. And there are no TV's."

He felt an expression of sympathy cross his face, but she diverted any further discussion of the media with a quick, "_So, about that drink..", _and another smile.

Minutes later, they were at a table in the far left corner of the room, its surface black lacquer and stained black wood, its seat a crescent shaped, art deco couch. Like all the tables in the club, a candle burned in its center, its cradle an open sphere pasted with tiny, mirrored chips.

Juliana swirled her glass of Merlot slowly under her nose, took a sip, then smiled. "This is one thing I got from my snob brother," she said. "A taste for expensive French wine." She smiled over the glass at Goren. "One of my few materialistic vices."

Goren knew for a fact that she didn't have a single bottle of it in her apartment. "You never told me how he was doing," he reminded her, taking a drink of his Guinness. He'd not been able to bring himself to order his usual bourbon. Since that morning two weeks before, he'd not had much of a taste for it.

Juliana set her glass down, shaking her head while silent laughter rippled through her shoulders. "He's intolerable," she said, but her eyes sparkled, amused.

"Today was the first day he was really coherent," she told him, "so he was on the phone all day trying to run his law firm from his hospital bed. Gave Brigham and Weaver hell over his car, and when they told him they'd have to get his wallet back to him later he made them wait while he spent the next hour canceling credit cards and moving money around." She paused, inhaled deeply and took another drink of her wine. Goren found himself smiling as she continued. "He knew it wasn't necessary of course, but…"

"He's addicted to power," Goren interjected.

Juliana nodded, her smile faltering beneath distant eyes for just a moment, then she went on, her humor returning quickly. "He's basically giving everyone hell but River. He won't eat the hospital food, made me go buy him new sheets, complains about taking the painkillers even though its obvious he needs them." She sipped her wine again, smiling at Goren. "So basically he's charmed no one working on his behalf."

The sudden static whine of an amplifier caught his attention, and Goren glanced briefly at the stage and back, returning her smile. "How's River?" he asked.

"He'll be ok," she said, but then her smile faded and she looked at the glass of wine, her fingers curled around the stem as it rested on the table. "I didn't call their mother," she said, then glanced quickly back up, a childlike guilt in her eyes. "Do you think that was wrong of me?"

"Well…" he began, but as he paused to consider his next words, she went on.

"I called her when River od'ed six years ago," she said. "He was in a coma for two days, then in the hospital detoxing for three weeks, and she didn't come. Didn't call. Nothing." She took another drink. "Neither one of them has spoken to her since."

"Have you?" he asked, curious.

She didn't answer him immediately, then said softly "once or twice." Then she quickly drained her glass of wine. "Enough about my dysfunctional family," she said, smiling again as she set the empty glass aside and tucked one leg beneath her. "Assuming you read what was in that box your partner returned to me, I'd say you have a pretty unfair advantage on me."

Her abrupt change of topic confused him for a moment, then he realized she meant her journals, and he looked away, taking a long swallow of Guinness. He _had_ read them, cover to cover, and parts of them more than once.

"I'm not…upset," she said gently, and he glanced at her, imagining she could see it all in his eyes. The way so much about her moved him. "Trade me," she added. "Tell me about you."

He drained his own glass then, setting it down harder than he meant to. "That's a broad topic," he said. "Most of it is really not worth discussing."

Her face fell, disappointed. "I doubt that," she said softly, then she looked away, watching the people setting up the stage. He didn't miss the slight rise of her chest as she sighed.

Goren cursed himself silently, grateful for the moment the server stopping by their table gave him. When she'd gone again, he said:

"Which decade should we start with?"

For a moment, he thought his initial, repulsive reaction to any questions about himself, his past, had offended her, or worse, that the interest she'd expressed had been merely polite conversation she was disinclined to continue. Her eyes remained focused on the stage, from whence came the first deep tones of a saxophone, but then she smiled.

"I was always fond of the eighties," she said.

And so he talked.

He told her about the army, made both of them laugh with several stories about boot camp, and about the many inane things he'd dealt with in the military police unit before he'd moved up to CID. She'd been especially fascinated by his descriptions of China, and the people he'd met there, and had prompted him into teaching her several phrases in Mandarin. They got sidetracked often by a variety of tributary subjects: once by European politics, then by communism, which led inevitably to the Vietnam war, and later by Confucian philosophy. Throughout the course of their conversation, measurable by two glasses of wine and three pints of Guinness, he realized two things. First, she could keep up with him on any subject they strayed to, actually telling him a few things he hadn't known, and second, it felt good to talk. Only the latter surprised him.

What else surprised him was that as he talked, he digressed. Instead of moving from the army to the police academy, he'd found himself telling her about his short lived experience in college, then about high school, which had been a similar experience for them both. He told her about teachers he'd irritated, and had brought tears of laughter to her eyes, and nearly his own, describing the host of reasons for his unpopular reputation in Mr. Dixon's biology class.

The subject of high school had then prompted him to tell her about Lewis, and about the cars they'd worked on in the summers, and crashed later, and about the stupid things the two of them had done to impress girls.

She was laughing again, setting her third glass of wine down to keep from spilling it. "Do fast cars really impress women?" she asked, wiping a tear from her cheek. "Or just the fast women?"

"They impress _me_," he assured her.

"Fast women?"

He laughed just as he was bringing his beer to his lips, and was forced to hold it away. "Fast cars," he said, setting the glass aside and leaning back against the couch. "I knew this Ferrari once…" he added wistfully, suppressing a grin as he stared across the crowded room in mock reflection.

"Stop," she said, almost breathless. "Next you'll be talking about football and… tools."

He scrubbed a hand across his face as silent laughter shook his chest, his shoulders. He hadn't laughed this much in… he couldn't remember how long, but it had actually begun to make the muscles in his cheeks and his jaw ache. It was an ironic pain. A good pain.

He dropped his hand back to the table, and found their server clearing away Juliana's now empty wine glass. Juliana asked her about their imported beers, and Goren wondered how long they'd been here. The several pints of beer he'd had were a warmth in his stomach, a loosening of his muscles, but little more. They must have been talking for some time, for the three glasses of wine Juliana'd had seemed to have no effect on her except for the slight color in her pale cheeks.

He realized then that over the course of the night, they'd moved progressively closer to one another on the half-moon couch that curled beside their table. Ostensibly, it had been to hear each better over the din of the music, but he was suddenly very aware of her proximity as though it had been unconscious, natural, before. She'd abandoned her shoes beneath the table and sat with both legs folded beneath her on the couch. He'd recounted most of the seventies leaning against one elbow, propped on the back of the couch, his body turned toward her, with her knee pressed against his thigh. If she were facing him, he would only have to lean forward, just slightly, to…

Their server left them, and she turned back at that moment, caught his eye. Impulsively, he looked away, shifting his weight back, and then mentally berated himself for acting like a foolish teenager. He'd no doubt that she was as perceptive as he was, and his defensive body language was likely easy to interpret incorrectly.

She propped her own elbow on the back of the couch, leaning her cheek in her palm. "So do you suppose the department would frown on this? You being a detective… myself perhaps still being a serial killer?" The last was said with a definite note of sarcasm, directed, he imagined, at Nancy Grace and her like.

He smiled, imagined Ross' opinion. "I'm quite sure they would," he said.

She regarded him silently for a moment, then asked softly: "You don't care?"

He would have thought it was obvious, since he was here, but he suddenly imagined that she'd meant something more by it. Did it bother him enough that he wouldn't want to see her again?

He shook his head.

Now it was she that looked away, seeming embarrassed.

Again, a deep impulse took over, and he moved his hand from beneath his cheek, and he touched her, guiding his fingers along the back of her hand, her forearm, to where her elbow rested against the couch, relinquished the contact slowly. She looked at him, and he forced himself to meet her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "About everything. Your brother, your job."

Her eyes narrowed briefly in confusion, then she shook her head. "I didn't get fired, you know," she said. "I quit."

"Still…" he said, but it was a surprising revelation.

Her hand touched his knee, the fingers pressing into it briefly before their server interrupted them once more, handing Juliana a pint of some amber liquid. She set it on the table without drinking from it.

"Knowing you blame yourself doesn't help me," she said. "The opposite, in fact."

He didn't know what to say to that.

Glancing at the table, the Guinness by now room temperature, he changed the subject.

"Have you heard anything from Brigham and Weaver?" He'd meant to alleviate one awkward moment, but had instead created another. Juliana rocked back slightly, took a swallow from her glass, and shook her head.

"You know," she said, frowning, "with all my forensic training, I always told myself if anything ever happened to me… I'd get something on them. Dig my nails in, maintain focus, be able to recall everything. But then it _did_ happen and now all I remember is…" she seemed to search for the right word, then shrugged. "...stupid. Useless."

Goren's brow creased. "I doubt that," he said gently. "What_do_ you remember?"

She took another drink. "He was wearing leather gloves, and they tasted… new. I remember the way the ski mask felt. I recognized the gun but the bullets they took out of my little brother renders that pointless." Her eyebrows came together for a moment, angry, or thinking, then her hand paused mid motion, her drink suspended in the air as she smirked suddenly. "Oh. And…he smelled like cloves."

Goren felt a fluttering wave of sick surprise in his stomach._Cloves_. The scent hit him like a wave, wafting from the memory of the afternoon before. Harris' discordant attitude, his harsh words about social workers, the way he'd winced when he'd moved his right arm, and, of course, the succession of clove cigarettes the SRO had made a point not to leave behind.

"_What_, Robert?" It was her voice, concerned.

He looked up, reading confusion in her eyes, and realized that his shock was probably written plainly on his face.

He shook his head, quickly. "Nothing," he lied.

"Seriously, Robert." she said, anxiety coloring her tone. "What did I say? You know something." The hand that had been resting against the back of the couch moved now, her fingers closing over his wrist. "You have to tell me."

He didn't have to tell her. In fact, it was probably extremely unprofessional of him if he did- it was an open case, and naming a man who could be a suspect in the near fatal shooting of her brother could potentially be dangerous, especially if he was wrong, and_especially_ if Jozua Everett had a name to go with his indignation. But the fear in her voice, the desperate need to understand why so much had happened to her, evoked his sympathy.

Unfortunately, all he could give her was likely to do little more for her than increase that anxiety.

"We might… already be looking at the person responsible…" he said, acutely conscious of her fingers, tight around his upper wrist, "You haven't gone back to your apartment yet, have you?"

She looked at him, eyes wide for a moment, and at first he imagined she was simply afraid, but then realized she was thinking. "So it _is_ connected. I _knew_ he was aiming that gun at me, and not Jozua." Her eyes were suddenly moist, and she released Goren's wrist. "He moved," she said.

"What?"

"My brother. I was on the ground, behind him." She held her arm out beside her. "More than a foot to his right. When I looked up I saw him…the other man… pointing that gun at _me_. And my brother moved. Between the gun and me."

Goren straightened, wishing he hadn't incited this, but realizing if it _was _the truth…

"Where are you staying right now?" he asked.

"In a hotel, by the hospital, with Riv," she said weakly. "Maybe I should stay away from them."

Of course, her first concern was for their safety, not her own. "No," he said. "You should stay there. At least until I…"

The vibration of his cell phone in his pocket interrupted his thoughts, and he pulled it out, knowing already that there was only one person that would have called him tonight. He glanced at the ID, seeing his partner's name, and was surprised for a moment when he saw the time on the display. It was almost two A.M. He glanced apologetically at Juliana and held up one finger, then answered the call.

"Eames," he said.

"_Hey. We've got another one."_

He closed his eyes, felt his other hand curl into a fist against the table. "Where?"

She told him the address, said she didn't know much more than that it was only one person, a teenaged boy, and that the M.O. matched, down to the crushed white petals in his mouth. He hung up the phone and pressed his fingers briefly against his eyelids. When he dropped his hand, he found her looking at him sadly.

"Another one?" she asked, and when he didn't answer, she nodded.

"I'm sorry," he said, then realized what he was apologizing for: for the fact that he had to leave, and he didn't want to. A pang of guilt at his compulsive insensitivity shot through him. "I'll go with you…make sure you get back to your hotel," he said, unable to keep the regret from his voice, despite the circumstances.

Juliana looked at him for a moment without speaking, and he thought she meant to refuse, but then she nodded. He wondered if it was because she was afraid, or because she genuinely wanted his company.

He knew that for himself, it was both.

-


	22. The Roots Of Things

--

**Sunday, January 10th**

Perhaps it was the wine, or the sense of security that she felt between his number in her cell phone and the three locks on the hotel door, but despite the state of alarm she'd left the club in, Juliana had fallen asleep almost the moment she'd climbed into bed.

It was late, after eleven, when she woke, to the sound of a gentle tapping at the door. Assuming it was housekeeping, she called out for them to return later, and pulled the blankets tighter around herself. How long had it been since she'd been able to sleep in?

She had almost slipped back into an easy slumber when the sound came again, this time in a pattern. Two taps, then three, then two. She realized her mistake immediately. She rose, slipped into her robe, and answered the door.

"Morning," River said cheerfully, craning his head to look around her. "For a minute I thought you didn't come back alone last night." His smile was sly.

Juliana left the door open behind her and made for the bed again. Her brother shut the door behind him and settled in a chair by the window. He had seemed to be on a strange, emotional high since they'd moved Jozua out of ICU the afternoon before, and Juliana was grateful for his infecting mood.

"So?" he said. "How'd it go?"

"It?" she asked, propping her pillow against the back of her bed and trying not to smile.

River wasn't fooled. "Your date." He stretched his long legs out before him and twined his fingers across his lap, waiting.

"It wasn't a date, Riv," she told him.

"Right," he said. "And you weren't wearing that dress." He nodded toward it, where it hung on the back of the bathroom door.

She blushed. When the detective had called the night before, she'd had the option of wearing a pair of the jeans and a t-shirt that she'd picked up from her apartment that morning, or letting her brother buy her something…nicer. She'd told herself she'd done it partly because it made Jozua happy when she would accept gifts from him- something she hardly ever did- and partly because she had not wanted to go back to her apartment complex at night.

The truth, she supposed, was that she'd wanted to make an impression.

River grinned at her evident embarrassment. "So are you going to seem him again?"

Juliana left the warmth of the bed again and pulled the curtains open, squinting in the afternoon sunlight that spilled through the window. "I don't know," she said.

"Joz thinks he's quite taken with you."

Juliana turned away from the window and gave her brother an amused, exasperated look. "And how would he know that?" She suddenly felt like she was in high school again, passing notes about a boy she liked.

River shrugged, one hand shading his eyes from the sunlight. "Something about how he acted at his office when they talked about you."

"Mmm." She crossed the room, gathering clothes to change into, and took a moment in the bathroom readying herself for their visit to the hospital. In reality, she wasn't sure at all if she trusted Jozua's reading of anyone, especially not someone as subtle and guarded as Robert Goren. She was not sure, in that same light, whether she could trust her own impressions. There had been moments, looks, the night before, when it definitely seemed that perhaps there was the hint of something more than…casual amity, but it had been so long since she'd looked for anything like that in a man.

In many ways, it all felt wrong: she still a topic of suspicious rhetoric in regard to a brutal crime, and he one of the detectives charged with solving it. And then there was what perhaps attracted her the most, and always had, with men. The evidence of pain, of need. She'd always gravitated toward those that seemed wounded, her natural empathy and her well-honed, nurturing instincts often guiding her to people she thought she could help. If she'd learned anything in her life, though, it was that people could not be _fixed_, and that happiness was something that had to come from within. Her brothers were her hardest lessons in that regard.

She did see in Robert, however, both much of who she was, and who she had once been. It had not been difficult to read between the lines of what he'd chosen to tell her about himself, blatantly avoiding any mention of his parents, or his brother. She imagined his childhood had been as unhappy as hers, perhaps in some ways more lonely, and that loneliness clung to him still. She'd had her brothers, who, although only her half-siblings, had always felt like more than just blood to her, even as children. Regardless of the fact that they were identical twins, she'd never felt isolated from their world, and looking back, she supposed she was lucky in that regard. Even if it was because they were all equally ignored by their parents. But she, as it was so obvious Robert didn't, did not trust people. Perhaps in the purely superficial sense of it, she trusted River, and Jozua; she knew they loved her, knew they would put her before anyone else, and never doubted it. There was more to trust than that, though. There was an element of complete honesty, openness, that the two people she loved most in the world weren't capable of. Not even with her. She'd learned that the hard way, waiting beside River's bed in that hospital for him to die from an addiction she hadn't even known he had. A pain she hadn't known the depths of.

After that, she'd spent many wakeful hours acclimatizing herself to a different sense of loneliness, working her way toward peace with it, acceptance. She saw, in Robert, someone who struggled with it still, and it reminded her painfully of how much she wanted something more than sterility, and resignation, and how afraid she was to imagine it.

She tied her hair back, suddenly wondering whether it _was_ a good idea to see him again. Then she frowned at her reflection in the mirror, wondering too if avoidant behavior was the lesson her brothers had learned best from her. People couldn't hurt you if you didn't let them inside.

She left the bathroom, finding River where she'd left him.

"Are you going to have problems with MIT?" she asked, pushing her feet into her sandals and hoping the subject of the detective would not come back up.

River's expression was a mixture of smug and amused. "They've probably got their fingers crossed that I come back," he said. "They've already got contract options on my dissertation work and most of the engineering department doesn't have the faintest idea how to replicate my network." He tapped one finger against his head. "I'm bad about writing stuff down."

Juliana snorted, remembering the trouble he'd gotten into in advanced calculus in high school for writing only the answers on tests, and none of the work. "Are they going to give you a Ph.D. for slacking?"

"They'll give me a lot more than that if it works," he said. "Or NASA will, and to hell with the degree." He grinned like a kid.

She flashed him a dubious glance, but honestly didn't have much doubt of either scenario. She still, after five years, had only the vaguest idea what it was he was working on for his Ph.D. Something to do with navigation, outer space, and "intelligent" machines.

"You ready?" she asked.

River heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Yes, and no. The longer they keep him in the hospital the more of a bastard he'll become." His eyes glittered with amusement.

-

Leaving the hotel and crossing the street to the hospital, Juliana knew River was right about Jozua. Yesterday, his first coherent afternoon, he'd been intolerable enough. Robert had summed it up quite well the night before when he'd said her brother was "addicted to power." Being in anyone's thrall, even if it was for his own good, was next to impossible for him to accept with grace. He treated the nurses charged with his care with a mixture of chilly indifference and harsh scorn. Of course, he treated all women like that, except her, (she'd often wondered what he had to pay his secretary) and Juliana had finally suggested they might find a male to argue with him about everything he found unacceptable. At least he was mildly less condescending. She had never fully understood it, except that she believed Jozua carried all the anger, all the furious resentment between the three children, and directed it all toward their mother. River internalized it all, was more despondent than Jozua, but seemed to harbor more of his feelings for their father. Even now, it saddened Juliana to alone understand how much the two of the them, River and their father, were alike, and how much joy it could have brought them both if only things had been different.

They reached his room quickly enough- the hotel where she and River were staying had been built in such proximity for families with loved ones in long term care.

It was with a measure of trepidation that Juliana knocked on the door softly, and hearing a muffled response through the barrier, she pushed it gently open a crack.

"Joz?" she said, cautiously, then stepped back in surprise when the door was pulled sharply from her grasp. The male nurse who'd been in the day before returned her startled look with a dour glare, and shouldered past her so quickly that River had to dance out of his way. Juliana turned to glance at the nurse as he put distance between himself and their brother's room at a quick pace , then she exchanged a grim, amused look with River and slipped through the open door.

The moment she saw him, everything from that night rushed back in a cold new light. She'd deduced from Robert's words- that a suspect _they_, major case, was looking at might be responsible for Jozua's shooting- that whoever was responsible for the serial slayings was the same man. The detective hadn't refuted it, and she knew he was sharp, calculating. He hadn't told her how he'd made the connection, but he'd allowed her to believe it. He hadn't told her why he thought this same man might have come after her, but he not suggested she wasn't the target.

Jozua was sitting up, one leg free of the blankets, his head bowed over his other knee. One hand gripped the rail of his bed, knuckles white. When the door clicked shut, he glanced up, and the stark pain in his eyes was like a knife through Juliana's chest. Of her two brothers, Jozua had always been the one she was least close to. He remained much more of an enigma to her, full of anger, and, if possible, twice as reserved and distant as his twin. She'd always thought he found her equally as incomprehensible; they lived in the same city, but until her recent incarceration, had spoken only a handful of times over the last year, and seen each other only twice. She imagined a large part of the reason for that was that he knew she disapproved of his career, and couldn't face what he saw as her scrutiny of his character, her judgment. And yet, when she'd needed him, he'd been there, and she knew, that if it had come to that, he would have used everything in his power to keep her out of jail. Even if he hadn't believed her. It was a loyalty she had not known she commanded. And now, with the memory of the barrel of a 9mm swimming so near the surface, she knew he'd stepped in front of that gun for her. Why?

Her eyes watered as she approached the bed. "What are you doing, you dummy?" she asked gently, kissing the top of his head. "Trying to get up?"

"Failing miserably," he said, his words slurred slightly with pain and with the morphine, though he spoke carefully to avoid it. He lay back against the raised bed, lifted one hand toward his pillow, but dropped it weakly, closing his eyes with a sharp hiss and a grimace of pain.

Juliana blinked back her tears- they wouldn't be appreciated- and adjusted his pillow beneath his head. It, like the blankets she rearranged around him, he'd had her buy him to replace the hospital issue. She glanced at River, who had settled on the couch beside the window which he'd occupied almost every available hour of the past two days.

She scanned the IV, two bags attached to it now. Morphine, and something else.

"Did you eat anything today?" she asked without much hope. The second argument with the hospital staff the day before had been over the meal they brought. Jozua, an ardent vegan, had found a variety of choice words for the hospital fare.

"Are you kidding?" Jozua said, opening his eyes now. "Even if I _could_ eat with this sludge in my veins, I wouldn't touch the stuff here."

"I love it," River said, without looking up from leafing through a magazine. "The bullets didn't kill you but the hospital will."

Jozua pointed a finger at him, dragging the cord of his IV behind it. "That's what I told them."

Juliana tried not to smile, not wanting to encourage him. He turned his pale eyes on her then, and she realized from the slight twitch of his lips that she hadn't quite succeeded. It never ceased to be eerily fascinating how much these two, as brilliant as they both were, could behave like twelve year olds.

"So how'd your date go?" Jozua echoed his brother.

Juliana growled low in her throat and settled on the end of the bed. "It wasn't a date," she said again.

"Uh huh. You should have seen him blush when I told him you were.. _mesmerized _by him."

Juliana felt her lips part. "You did _not_."

"Oh come on," he said, with a smile that didn't extend to his eyes. "You're thirty-four. What is he, fifty? This isn't high school"

Juliana picked at the corner of the blanket. "Forty-five," she corrected him. Her eyes shifted to River, and found that same sly smile on his face, and she realized both of them were enjoying this. She felt warmth creep into her cheeks, and remembered the way she'd felt last night when she'd first met him at the club, when he'd looked at her like that. He'd made no effort to hide the plain appreciation in his eyes. She'd looked at the floor then so he wouldn't see the same thing in hers.

The memory was dispelled when Jozua was wracked with a sudden spasm of coughing. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, squeezed tightly shut. Juliana reached out and took his hand, but he pulled it away.

"I'm fine," he croaked, unconvincing. The fit passed, and he scrubbed the moisture from his eyes. "Did your detective in shining armor say anything about this?"

Juliana looked away, knowing he meant the shooting. There was no way in hell she could suggest to Jozua that there was a suspect. She had no doubt at all that he was the vindictive type, with the resources to carry something out and get away with it.

"No," she lied, trying to look frustrated. "I didn't ask."

Despite the fact that he was a defense attorney, reading people was not one of his strong points. He reached to the table beside him and screwed the lid off a bottle of water, taking a drink. "I'll have to go through even more sordid avenues to hire a bodyguard now," he said, but Juliana heard a definite tone of amusement in his voice. She glanced at him, frowning, seeing no remorse at all for the man who had died trying to save his life.

"Jozua…" she began, but an unexpected tapping at the door stopped her. She turned her head, waiting for someone to enter. When they didn't, she glanced back at Jozua, and the sound came again. He waved a hand at her, and she called out for him, he likely too weak for it.

The door opened slowly, and a woman slipped through the opening. For one moment, too brief, Juliana didn't recognize her in the shadows. But then she took a step forward, and her features fell into place. She was petite, her hair, dark brown with the barest hint of red and silver, drawn into a graceful bun at the nape of her neck. She had skin the exact shade of porcelain, unmarred by Juliana's girlish freckles. Those disturbing, near colorless grey eyes, set so symmetrically in her fine-boned face like small, glittering stones, passed quickly over Juliana, to Jozua, and then to River.

"Here they are, my two babies." Her voice was thick honey lying over the vestige of her Dutch accent, years removed. Her smile was serpentine, so horribly like Jozua's.

Movement behind her tore Juliana's gaze away, and she turned in time to see River drop the magazine he was reading. His eyes were huge, and his hand shot to the table for the sunglasses he'd taken off when they arrived. He merely grazed them with his fingers, and they slid off the desk, onto the floor. He looked at Juliana then, pleading. She looked at Jozua.

For a moment, his face was a mirror of his twin's, and, she imagined, her own. Shocked. Then his eyes narrowed slowly, his chest rising.

"What the _fuck_ are you doing here?" he asked, shifting back in the bed as though he could back farther away from her.

Jacqui Everett smiled, placating, and crossed the room to the bed. She reached out and touched Jozua's face with her perfectly manicured hand. "I'm your mother, darling," she said.

Juliana heard a strangled, choked sound behind her. The three of them looked to River, who had eyes only for his mother.

"Where were you six years ago?" His voice was barely more than a whisper, full of hurt.

Jacqui turned that same, tolerant smile on him. "You did that to yourself, sweetheart. Was I supposed to support you?"

Juliana moved, her feet coming to rest beneath her on the floor. A well of suppressed rage stirred, and she opened her mouth to speak, but no words would form. Emotions and thought formed and mixed together so quickly that they denied expression. She was back in that hospital room in San Francisco, listening to him scream about things she couldn't see, watching him shake, wondering if the light would ever come back into his eyes. She'd come away from that experience with many things, but perhaps the most potent was River's fragility. The misery he could not commute.

Jacqui moved around the bed, skirting Juliana as though she wasn't there, and held her arms out to River. He stared at her, stricken, and then in one fluid, lightning motion, he ducked away from her, crossed the room, knocking the tray with Jozua's abandoned breakfast to the floor, and disappeared into the bathroom. The sound of the lock being engaged was clear.

Jacqui looked curiously at the door, then shrugged, and sighed. "Six years isn't long enough to grow up?" she asked, but directed it at neither Jozua nor Juliana.

"Not to grow up, Jacqui," Juliana said, meaning to force vehemence into her voice, but managing only a harsh whisper. "To forgive."

She waved a hand, still not looking at her, and walked back to the hospital bed. Her face transformed again in a smile as she reached out to smooth Jozua's hair. He tried to pull away, wincing.

"And you, my precious boy. What _have_ you been doing? I hear you've amassed yourself quite a little fortune. I always knew one of my children would amount to something."

Jozua's eyes, stone, like hers, betrayed no emotion. "And how much of it do you want to leave us alone?"

"Us?" she said, for the first time looking at Juliana. "You see what you did to my children? Spiteful, angry things, just like you." She shook her head in that maddening way, mocking.

What hit Juliana then, like a devastating meteor into the center of her hard won peace, was that all the anger, the resentment, the hurt that she thought dispelled, worked through, overcome… was little better than well-hidden. She was fourteen years old again, listening to her step mother tell her why she was responsible for her father not loving her brothers. Did it never go away? Was what she'd said to Robert a lie she cultivated so that she could breathe?

"I understand if you're a cold blooded killer," Jacqui said then, her perfect, darkly rouged lips curling in a derisive smile. "But did you have to drag them into it too?"

"_OUT!_" The word was burning, delivered with a fit of coughing that left a hint of blood on his lips. Even Jacqui seemed surprised at his vehemence, and when she put her hand out again to touch him, he locked his fingers over her wrist and bent it back, hard enough that her face creased in pain. He levered himself up so that his eyes met hers. "_Get out,"_ he whispered.

Juliana watched her expression, the moment of surprise on her fine features disappearing quickly. She jerked her hand from Jozua's stone grip and brushed her skirt casually. The momentary hint of color in her white cheeks faded, and she smiled again.

"I'll come back when you're feeling better," she said, as though nothing unpleasant had taken place.

"Don't," Jozua said, but she ignored him, patting his cheek as he batted her hand away. She circled Juliana, whose own muscles were stiff, and crossed the room. She paused beside the door of the bathroom, and knocked softly while saying "_Time to grow up, honey." _

Then she was gone.

Juliana watched the door close, and stood there in frigid silence for a moment before the tension began to slowly drain away, leaving a trembling in her hands, a hollowness in her chest. Reason began to seep back in, and the moment of doubt she'd felt for herself, her own progress, began to gain clarity. Perhaps it was not so much for herself that she felt pain, anger, but for her brothers.

Their pain was not something she had the power to forgive.

She turned her head slowly toward Jozua, feeling tears in her eyes, but trying to blink them back. She realized suddenly that she would have been more comforted if there had been any emotion at all in his expression, but the look he returned for only a moment was devoid, concrete. Then he leaned back against his pillow and closed his eyes, one hand curled into a tight fist.

A tear slid down her cheek, and she inhaled sharply to keep from sobbing aloud like a little girl. Then she crossed the room to the bathroom door.

She knocked, calling River's name, telling him it was ok, like she'd done so many times before.

---


	23. Seeds

**-**

**Sunday, January 10th, 2008 2:45 PM**

**Long Residence, Brooklyn**

**Detectives Eames and Goren**

Janet Long reached across the coffee table, tipped a mostly empty bag of Doritos from the top of the ashtray, and pulled it toward her. She stabbed her cigarette into the midst of numerous others, knocking several of the butts onto the copy of People magazine beneath. She shook her head, blowing a stale cloud into the air between them, and picked up the crumpled pack of smokes. She discarded the first one, bent and shedding dried tobacco onto her lap, then lit another.

"I told him didn't I?" she said, her voice a little too shrill, as though she expected to be rebuked by the two detectives sitting on the couch across from her. "I told him '_don't you go hanging around those kids because it's gonna get you into trouble'_ but the brat never listened to a word I said."

She blew another cloud of smoke at them, her muddy brown eyes flicking furtively to Eames.

Beside her, Goren shifted, his movement dislodging another magazine which was draped across the back of the couch. It slid off behind him, and he twisted awkwardly to pull it free, saying: "Are you sure Jeff never mentioned anything to you about friends from Frederick Douglass junior high?"

Janet shook her head. "That's in Queens, ain't it?. What the hell would he be doing hanging around kids from all the way out there?"

_Making our job easier_, Eames thought to herself, then cringed as a roach crawled across a plate and the unidentifiable, petrified remains of someone's dinner. She glanced at Goren and saw his forehead crease as he too watched the bug disappear beneath the couch. Abruptly, he stood, catching Eames' eyes briefly as she joined him.

"We'll uh…be in touch, Mrs. Long," he said, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing at the floor.

"If you think of anything…" Eames began, but the other woman interrupted her.

"I'll be sure to call," she snapped, her tone tinged with sarcasm. She followed them as they weaved their way around discarded laundry, trash bags in various stages of disuse, pieces of a partly assembled entertainment center. She clung to the edge of the door as it spilled the detectives into the hallway, her bright pink nails incongruously bright against the peeling wood. Before either of them could say anything in the way of a parting comment, Janet Long, mother of the latest victim of an increasingly prolific serial killer, shut the door with a resolute thud.

-

Eames looked at her partner, finding him staring at the closed door, mouth slightly open. He frowned then and looked at her.

"Did you get the feeling we were inconveniencing her?" he asked dryly.

Eames made a face. "So much for remorse, huh?"

"Why am I not surprised?" Goren sighed, and tucked his binder under one arm. He took several steps down the hallway, pausing to wait for Eames as she checked the bottom of her shoes for residue from any of the various feline deposits she'd seen in the filthy apartment.

"It's a wonder this kid didn't have a social worker," she said, joining Goren on the stairs to the first floor. "How do people live like that?"

"Or let their kids live like that," Goren agreed. "If I ever have…" he stopped, covered the omission with a yawn as he pushed the door to the street open and held it for Eames.

She stepped gratefully into the cool, blue afternoon and wondered what her partner had been about to say. _If I ever have….what? Children_, was the impression she had by his abrupt cessation, but why had he not said it? Because he didn't want to remind himself of an unlikelihood, or because he didn't want her to know he thought about it? She resisted the urge to tell him she thought he'd make a fantastic father, knowing she could have misread his silence.

Instead, she pulled out her cell phone and checked her voicemail; Vasquez had phoned while she and Goren were interviewing Janet Long. She unlocked the SUV and maneuvered into the driver's seat while she listened. The message wasn't long. The junior detective sounded excited about something, and suggested that they come back to the squad room as soon as possible.

"Ricky has something on Norman Harris, I think," she said in response to Goren's curious look.

Her partner stared at her from the passenger seat for a moment, pulling the door slowly shut. Then his mouth curved up in a decidedly impish smile. "_Ricky?_"

Eames lips remained parted, her next words arrested. She felt a contrary flush creep into her cheeks.

"Goren he's just a kid," she said, stabbing the keys into the ignition and closing her door.

"He's only four years younger than you," Goren told her while she refused to look at him. "That's not so bad. A lot of professional women…"

"You can stop right there," Eames growled, trying not to grin. She glanced out of the corner of her eye and felt a surge of pleasure at the broad smile on her partner's face as he gazed out the window. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the evidence of his good humor.

Easing the SUV into the flow of traffic on the expressway, she thought again about the night before, and wondered anew at what was behind Goren's curious, almost buoyant demeanor. When she'd called him at two am on Saturday to relay the message about their latest victim, she'd expected him to be awake, but home. Instead she'd heard what sounded like jazz music, the clink of bottles, a cacophony of voices in the background. Her first thoughts were accompanied by concern, remembering the still mysterious incident two weeks previously that had upset him so, and, she imagined, had likely begun in a bar. She had her eyes open for him, looking for any further demonstration of his recent destructive behavior. The last thing she wanted was to have to intervene, to go to Ross, but she would if she had to.

While she'd waited for him at the scene, she'd worked herself into imagining her partner would show up looking as he had that morning on the steps outside his apartment. Graying five-o-clock shadow, bleary red eyes, the rounded shoulders of a weekend spent in the pursuit of decadence.

And so she'd been surprised at the version of Robert Goren that had stepped out of the cab and made his way to her. He'd had a hair cut, a fact that deemphasized the gray and took ten years off his face. He'd shaved, and there was a faint warmth in his cheeks- courtesy, perhaps, of alcohol, but clearly not an excess. The tailored suit, expensive for a detective, left her curious where he might wear it.

Over a dead body in a Brooklyn alley, however, had not been the place for such idle questions.

Now, however…

She glanced at him again as he cycled through the radio channels, and almost laughed at the weird meeting of their minds when he stopped on one station and the warm sound of jazz suddenly filled the car. His eyes grazed her briefly before he settled back in his seat, returning his attention to the view beyond the window. Two fingers kept the beat against his knee.

"Good music last night?" she tried tentatively.

To her surprise, instead of his usual ambiguous monosyllables, her partner looked at her and smiled. "It was, actually. A club in Midtown I've never been to before. I…" he faltered, glanced away and then back, then added more softly. "Do you like jazz?"

"Uh…" Eames was surprised by the question. In seven years, Goren had never asked her what kind of music she liked. "Yea," she said. "I like it better live, though, than recorded."

"Of course," Goren agreed. "Music is energy… it usually all sounds better live. " He looked out the window again, and Eames rushed to think of something else to say.

"So uh…who'd you see?" It was a superfluous question; the truth was, Eames couldn't name a single modern, performing jazz group.

He partner looked sharply at her, a look that was almost apologetic passing across his face. Then his gaze swung away again and he mumbled: "I uh… met her…uhm…Juliana, there."

His misinterpretation of her question was more interesting. "Really?" She kept her voice light, interested. In reality, she found that she was not terribly surprised, but she did wonder who's idea it had been.

"She uh…I called her to ask about Jozua," he explained as though reading her mind. "And…" he smiled. "She said she needed a drink."

"So her brother is going to be ok?"

Goren nodded slowly, looking cautiously at her, then brushed imaginary particles from the leg of his pants.

_What was he thinking?_ Eames wondered as she weaved across the expressway toward downtown Manhattan. That she would be upset with him for seeing a woman some people still erroneously thought was a serial killer?

"So…are you going to see her again, you think?" It came out sounding half-hopeful, even though she wasn't sure it was a good idea.

Now Goren only shrugged, shifting in his seat and staring out the window again.

_So that was his limit_. The limit of what he was comfortable saying to her about himself. Eames sighed. At least it was a start. She was about to change the subject, ask him what he thought about the fact that Jeff Long's murder had been so far out of the killer's seeming territory, when he inhaled a deep breath and looked at her again.

"I hope I see her again, Alex," he said. "I… she's…" He hesitated again. "Compelling." The word was soft, spoken with unmistakable weight.

Eames didn't know what to say, a little unbalanced by his candor. She'd tried for years to talk to him about things besides work, but he'd rebuffed her at every turn.

"I think she feels the same way," she found herself saying, remembering that night in Jozua's apartment, and Juliana's shy words about her partner. She glanced to her side in time to see a smile spread across his face. It was a cautious, hopeful smile that lingered as he turned back to the window.

The fact didn't escape Eames that he hadn't asked her _why_ she thought Juliana was similarly "compelled" by him. Perhaps there was more to that night than he had said, but she was still too accustomed to being discouraged in her advances, her attempts to get to know him.

For some reason, though, after seven years, he seemed to be making an effort of his own.

---

Vasquez met them halfway across the bullpen, sucking on a coke and brandishing several printed pages.

"Wait'll you see this, Detectives," he said, following them to their desks. As Goren and Eames sat down, he made to do so as well, then looked behind him at the dangerously empty space, and reached out to pull a chair toward himself from Sergeant Neil's desk. He dropped into it, crumpling his coke can and tossing it in the trash. Goren immediately fished it out and relegated it to the adjacent, green can with its recycling logo. Vasquez didn't notice, turning his bright, topaz eyes on each detective in turn.

"So I treated this as a missing persons, like you said, Alex." Eames ignored Goren's smirk, and Vasquez seemed to miss it as well, continuing. "I looked for any credit card activity matching his social, warrants, arrests in other states, postal forwarding, passport activity, social security earning reports, name change records." He rattled the paper at them. "Nothing, since December of 2003."

Goren leaned forward, holding out his hand for the paper. Vasquez relinquished it.

"Nothing?" Eames repeated, her suspicion that Goren's half-cocked theory might have more merit than it had seemed at first. Not that his intuition was something she wondered at much anymore.

Vasquez shook his head firmly. "The last public record of his name was when Sherry Harris filed for divorce in February of 2005, citing abandonment." He pointed a finger at the paper as Goren turned a page. "Uncontested." He looked sheepishly at Eames. "I decided to go an extra mile for you, so I looked up his old manager from the mechanics shop he worked at back when, and went out to Staten Island this morning to find out what he knew. Says he talked to Norman the day before he disappeared about a correction on his paycheck that was supposed to be taken care of the next morning. Says Norman was really adamant about having to have the money. But he never saw him or heard from him again."

Eames would have returned Vasquez's triumphant smile if the news had not been more eerily significant. She looked at Goren to find him already looking at her.

"He's a ghost," Goren said softly, pointedly.

Eames opened her mouth to respond, but Vasquez interrupted excitedly.

"Almost," he said, reaching out to take the printouts from Goren's hand. He flipped a page, where Eames could see that he had scribbled something in blue ink. "Norm had a car registered in his name, and when I ran the tags, I found something interesting. A 1994 Nissan Sentra, sold at a police auction in December of 2004."

"A _police_ auction?" Goren asked, his tone musing. He leaned back in his chair, propping one elbow on his other arm and curling his fingers over his lips, thinking. "So it was abandoned somewhere?"

Vasquez looked disappointed. "I assume so. I wasn't able to find out where, but apparently no one came looking for it. Sat in the impound for almost a year after the last time anyone saw him." He handed the page he'd written on to Eames. "But here's who bought it. Old guy over in Jersey."

Goren's eyes were distant a moment longer, then he looked at Eames. She was already standing, picking up the keys.

---

Norman Harris Jr's '94 Nissan was in the possession of sixty-eight year old Edward L. Morgan, a retired school teacher living alone in a turn of the century two-bedroom in Hoboken, New Jersey. He responded to the unannounced appearance of two City detectives asking about his car with a lethargic complacency, mumbling something about "that damn foul city" as he led them to the garage and handed over the keys. He then retired to the corner beside the lawn mower and watched them with sharp, bird's eyes, arms folded over his checkered shirt.

The old man had kept the car clean, free of clutter, and Eames' first impression on peering into the back seat was that they were chasing their tails here. It had been four years since Norman Harris had supposedly driven the car, and despite the fact that there was no record of his person, an abandoned vehicle was hardly a smoking gun for foul play. But Goren's hunches had solved more crimes than wasted their time, and she diligently inspected the carpet and the seat cushions while her partner popped the trunk.

She pressed the cushions down with one hand, prying into the creases, but found only a capped ink pen and a quarter. The cushions themselves were clean, though worn, like the tan carpet of the floorboards. She backed out of the door and rubbed her neck, circling to the trunk just as Goren finished detaching the spare tire from its base.

It hit the ground, bounced once before Goren caught it with his foot and tipped it gently over. He took out the pen light he carried in his breast pocket and turned it on, shining it where the tire had been. Eames peered at the rest of the trunk, empty but for the tire, and the bottom of the padding Goren had lifted to remove the spare. Nothing.

Goren straightened, frowning, and folded his arms as he stared unseeing at the trunk. Eames recognized the frustration in his expression. He hated to be wrong.

She looked down then, and on a hunch of her own, she called out to Mr. Morgan: "Is this the same spare that came with the car when you bought it?"

Glancing at the man, she saw him nod.

Goren was kneeling already, and they met there, crouched over the tire. She propped it up between them, and they combed every inch of it with the penlight. It seemed that this inspection too would prove fruitless until Goren suddenly put a gloved hand out and stopped Eames from rotating the tire. He leaned closer to it, light pointed between the outer two treads.

"Look," he said. "Does that look a different color to you?"

Eames took the penlight he offered her and squinted at the spot, holding her hair out of the way with one hand. The discoloration was slight, but it was there. A rust brown scoring the edge of the outermost tread- a streak only two inches or so in length.

She looked at Goren. "I'll call CSU," she said, her voice quiet.

---


	24. What Lies Buried In The Garden

**Monday, January 11th, 2008**

The blood on the tire, which CSU had determined was indeed human, was, in itself, relatively useless. Norman Harris had not been facilitating enough in his criminal past to leave a sample of his DNA on file, nor had Nathan Harris left a fingerprint anywhere in the vicinity of the tire. Even if he had, any ADA worth his weight would have told the detectives what they already knew: it proved nothing other then that Nate Harris had touched his brother's car, or the tire, and that could have happened for any number of reasons, at any time. Even blood evidence didn't necessarily mean a crime had been committed.

It was, however, enough to convince both Goren and Eames that it was time to pay a visit to Sherry Harris.

They both knew that if Nate Harris was responsible for the disappearance of his brother, the catalytic event Goren had predicted could be behind the escalating violence, then their talking to Sherry was a red flag the SRO would be unlikely to miss.

There had been many times in the past when Goren's instincts, his far-fetched conclusions, had eluded Eames; she was good at her job, but there was some particular level of divining human subtlety that her partner had always possessed more of an aptitude for. She'd simply grown to trust him, a trust born of statistics, and went along even when she wasn't convinced he was seeing something that was there.

This time, however, she was completely behind him.

All the victims could be tied, in some way, to the SRO. The only exception was Jeff Long, by all accounts an entirely random target, but Goren had found even that death to be telling. The killer was a calculating planner; that much was obvious from the elaborate nature of the murders and the lack of evidence, but the scant days between Jhosa and Damien Moore's murder and the slaughter of the Carmichael family was, they both agreed, the result of the killer wanting them to know they'd arrested the wrong person for his crimes. Jeff Long's death, Goren thought, showed them that the killer thought he was running out of time to accomplish as much of his…mission… as possible. But this only made easy sense if Harris was, in fact, the killer. If so, he had to at least suspect he was on their radar, and was intelligent enough not to do anything else to directly draw their attention. What they had learned about Jeff Long also suggested that he had some minor involvement in a local gang, the sort of activity Harris, being a cop and an advocate against gang violence, was likely to uncover easily.

It meant their killer was stalking street kids now, hoping to take as many bad apples out as he could before the hammer fell, and it made the idea that they were getting closer to the truth profoundly uncomforting.

Sometimes even justice wasn't a happy ending.

-

Sherry Harris lived in the small, two bedroom brick home the elder Norman Harris had bequeathed to his son. It was yet another curious fact. With the booming housing market in the Five Boroughs, it seemed strange that a man who had abandoned the his family would have similarly abandoned such a valuable piece of real estate and left it in the care of a woman he seemed to have despised. Especially not his childhood home.

Eames guided the SUV down Plymouth Avenue, giving a young boy on a bicycle a wide berth while wondering why the kid wasn't in school, and glanced at her partner. He had his binder open in his lap, busily writing something across the top of a legal pad. As she looked, he underscored something heavily and drew a large question mark beside it.

She felt an irrational urge to smile at that as she returned her attention to the street. He was like a predator, closing on a scent, fairly exuding that manic energy that was characteristic of their early partnership. She wasn't ready to believe it would last, but it was heartening to have the old Robert Goren back even for a moment.

She checked the time on the dashboard as she eased up to the curb across from the house. It was just after ten in the morning, late enough that Sherry's son Patrick could be expected at school. Goren had decided they shouldn't call beforehand; he wanted to gauge Sherry's reaction to their sudden appearance, their questions about her ex-husband, without giving her time to bury anxieties.

She glanced at Goren as she pulled the keys from the ignition. "So how much are we going to say about the other Harris... about Nathan," she asked.

Goren opened his door, eyes forward in thought for a moment. "It depends," he said, stepping out of the SUV and looking at her. "If we think she knows something…"

"She still might not talk," Eames said. "For one of two reasons. She's grateful, or she's scared. Maybe both."

Goren shut the door, walked around the SUV, and joined her as she pocketed the keys. "Maybe it's time for absolution." He gave her a small, wry smile, and she returned it in equal measure as she closed her own door.

The smallish front yard was well kept, the hedges pressed against the street-face of the house symmetrical, their lines flush with the long, rectangular window. A carpet of white flowers and tiny green leaves lay alongside the sidewalk that led to the house, bordered on both sides with two-inch high wooden strips, swollen and dark with morning moisture.

They reached the door at the same time, but Goren leaned away, examining another plant, its flowers a waxy yellow that seemed strange for winter, trailing across a latticed trellis along the corner of the house.

Eames pressed the doorbell.

There was not an immediate response. Eames watched Goren begin to leave the concrete of the front walk, his attention on the root structure of the climbing vine, and was about to suggest that no one was home when the door inched slowly open. Goren straightened abruptly by her side, binder under one arm.

The woman that looked through the crack of the door was thin. Her hazel eyes were set too deeply in her face, her brown hair drawn away in a harsh pony-tail.

"Sherry Harris?" Eames asked, and the other woman glanced sharply from one of them to the other.

"Yeah?" Her voice wavered, both eyebrows shot up, her Brooklyn accent tired. "What's he done now?"

Eames felt Goren look at her, but didn't turn her head. "You mean Patrick?" Nathan Harris' nephew. He would have been only ten when Norman Harris disappeared.

Sherry nodded slowly, sighed heavily, and then the door swung open. She was small, too thin. Her shoulder blades protruded from beneath the white tank-top that trailed over her black skirt. Her shoes were sensible, the style not matching the filmy black panty-hose. A waitress, Eames thought immediately, stepping through the door into the house. She glanced behind her for her partner, but found him still in the open doorway.

"These are nice…" Goren said, pointing at the vine and the yellow flowers that climbed along the corner of the house. "What do you call this..?" His voice trailed off, and he dropped his hand back to his side as Sherry shook her head.

"My… Patrick's uncle. He does that," she waved a hand in the direction of the front yard, swallowed. "He's always plantin' stuff."

Goren nodded, caught Eames eyes.

"We're actually not here to talk to you about Patrick," Eames told her. "We have some questions about your ex-husband."

A shadow settled in her eyes. Other than the muscle that flexed in her neck, she didn't display any other outward sign of surprise, and she shrugged and turned quickly on her heel, moving across the room to the open kitchen. Goren crossed into the house, shutting the door softly behind him. Sherry jerked a cabinet open, clattered down a coffee cup, then turned back to face them with another cup in her hand and pointed it at them.

"You guys always are always drinking coffee," she said.

Beside her, Goren cleared his throat. "No, that's ok…" he said. "Uh…"

Eames felt his eyes on her, and she looked at him, then at Sherry and smiled awkwardly. "Uh…sure. Coffee."

Sherry nodded, setting the mug on the counter, took a third one down, and as she poured, Eames glanced around the room. The first thing that stood starkly out was that everything was immaculately clean- a most dramatic contrast to the last home they'd entered in regard to the case. The floors outside the kitchen, century old, worn hardwood, were free of clutter, dust. The walls looked as though perhaps the original paper had been stripped, and a new coat of paint had been applied sometime in recent years- a pleasant, unpresumptuous taupe. The counters of the open kitchen sprawled in the room's left corner were a cream linoleum, and looked as though they'd been probably been replaced in the fifties. They too were spotless, and sparsely accoutered, like the rest of the room. The only decorative element on the walls, in fact, was a series of photographs in mismatched frames, and it was to these that her partner gravitated, hands crossed behind his back.

"These are all of your son?" Goren asked, bending close to one of the few that featured more than one face.

"That's Patrick," she said. Not offering to expound, Sherry dumped a spoonful of sugar into each of the coffee cups, then took the milk out of the refrigerator and added it as well. It seemed to Eames that more than her response at the door, this process seemed to indicate that the other woman was indeed unnerved by their presence. Most people enquired what others preferred in their coffee when offering it (she'd been offered more cups of coffee than she could count), and Goren had clearly declined the cup that Sherry now crossed the room and put in his hand. He accepted it awkwardly, looking into it with a creased expression that he then turned on Eames.

Sherry, her step quick, crossed to Eames and handed her a cup. Then she backed away from her, from both of them, and stood with both of her hands folded over her own mug, held aloft at chest level, and looked at them.

"So you wanted to ask me about Norman?"

Eames didn't miss the way Sherry's knuckles paled over the ceramic. "Why don't we uh… sit down," she said gently, giving her a reassuring smile.

Sherry pressed her lips together, and she rocked quickly forward as though she meant to take a step but her feet remained planted of their own accord. Then she turned at the waist, set her full coffee cup on the counter, and walked quickly past both detectives to the couch. She sank onto it, looked at them, then stood up just as quickly and removed herself to the armchair that stood at a right angle in front of the window.

The detectives took the silent invitation to share the couch, Goren setting his cup of coffee down on the low table before them, laying his binder next to it. Eames settled beside him, and took a drink from her own cup. A compulsion, really. She held it against her knee and asked:

"When was the last time you saw your husband?"

"Ex-husband," she corrected, then paled and glanced behind her, through the window. "Look," she said. "I haven't seen Norm in… more than four years. I don't know what you want from me."

"Well…" Eames said, knowing her partner was biding his time, observing Sherry's behavior. "He may have some knowledge in regard to another case we're working on." She glanced briefly at Goren, and he nodded for Sherry's benefit. "And we… can't seem to track him down."

"We were hoping you could help us," Goren added.

Sherry stared at him, the two middle fingers of her right hand silently tapping the arm of the chair. She looked away then, toward the wide-screen television standing alone on the far wall, then back.

"Look… I don't know where he is. Honestly." She frowned, and Eames had the sudden impression that she was telling the truth. "And…" she added, crossing her arms over her chest and sucking in a deep breath. "I don't wanna know."

"Can you think of someone that might have heard from him… seen him?" Eames tried.

"No." She crossed her legs now and tapped one foot against the empty air.

"Your husband was abusive, wasn't he?" Goren asked then. "Was it toward only you… or toward your son as well?"

"It's kinda late to be asking that, don't you think?" She snapped then, leaning forward, her foot connecting with the floor once more. Then her eyes widened slightly at her own vehemence, and she settled back and looked at the table. "Look. He was as bad to Patrick as he was to me." Her eyes burned at them. "I'm glad the bastard is gone." She let out a shuddering hiss and made the sign of the cross over her chest.

Eames looked at Goren, and he gave her a barely perceptible nod- a mere tilt of his chin. She lifted the coffee cup again, taking another sip while she collected her thoughts, and setting it on the table said:

"How often do you see Patrick's uncle, Nathan Harris?"

Sherry's chest rose in a deep, slow breath, but her face remained expressionless. "He tries to help us out," she said, her voice flat. "Keeps up the yard. I don't have time for that kind of stuff since Norm… I work all the time. He picks Patrick up from school some days. Goes to his games when I can't get there…" She trailed off.

"Were he and Norman close?"

"They were brothers," she said, but her tone didn't imply any love lost between the two.

"We found Norman's car," Goren told her. "CSU found blood in the trunk." He didn't bother to add that the fact might mean absolutely nothing. Ignorance was often their strongest ally when interviewing witnesses.

Eames watched the little color in Sherry's cheeks drain away, and she made the sign of the cross again. She looked once more across the room.

"You keep looking at the TV," Goren pointed out. "Are you thinking about something you've seen recently? Maybe on the news?"

Sherry remained frozen for a moment, then turned back and shook her head, forcing a smile onto her lips that contrasted dramatically with her haunted eyes.

"You shouldn't be asking me about Nathan."

They both stared at her, Eames imagining that Goren was also trying to interpret the ambiguous tone of that statement.

"Do you think he could have killed your husband?" It was a stretch, blunt. The fact that she hadn't said anything about the car, the blood, suggested she already knew, or wasn't entirely surprised to learn of it. "Or did he help you cover it up?" Eames knew Goren didn't believe that for a minute, but he asked anyway.

Now Sherry's brow creased angrily. "I don't kill people," she said.

"_You_ don't." Eames prodded her omission. It seemed to her that the woman was being purposefully obtuse, letting what she_didn't_ say answer their questions.

"How old is your son, now, Ms. Harris?" Goren redirected. "Fourteen?" Sherry twined her fingers together, nodding, and Goren continued. "When you answered the door, you thought we were here about Patrick. Why?"

She didn't answer for a moment. "He's uh… been acting out a lot lately. You know… getting to that age where he wonders why his father… abandoned him. He's got a lot of anger."

"I can understand that," Goren said. "Does he spend a lot of time with his uncle?"

"He's been… around more lately."

"Since Patrick started getting in trouble?" Eames suggested.

Sherry stared silently at them for a moment, her eyes focused on the badge clipped to Goren's lapel, then she made a show of looking at her watch. "I'm going to be late for work." She stood up. "You have to go."

Neither of them moved.

"You never answered our question about whether or not you thought Nathan Harris might have killed your husband…" Goren reminded her.

"I wouldn't tell you if I did." She meant it.

"If Nate Harris is who.. what.. we think he is…" Eames knew the time for being circumspect was at an end. This woman knew something. "…then your son might be in danger." She wasn't sure if that was true, knowing that Patrick Harris' death would be an unmistakable red herring for his uncle's guilt.

Goren pulled his binder into his lap then, opened it, and Eames knew what he was doing. She kept her eyes on Sherry. Her partner withdrew a photograph, and set it on the table.

"This is what he does to his victims," Goren said, and Eames heard the strain of frustration in his voice. He clearly believed as well that they were maddeningly close to something here.

Sherry clapped a hand over her mouth, and her eyes filled with horrified tears. Eames didn't bother to look at the table as Goren laid another picture out.

"These kids," he said, "were all the children of abusive parents, all in trouble themselves. Gangs, drugs, problems at school. We believe the killer considers himself a… vigilante." He set another picture out, and a muted, indecipherable noise escaped Sherry's throat. "He believes he's ending a cycle…one begun by their parents… by killing the children that follow in their footsteps. Like Patrick."

Now Sherry removed her hand from her mouth and shook her head vigorously. "No! Patrick is _nothing_ like his father. And Nate…" She stooped, and angrily gathered the photographs from the table. She shoved them back at Goren. Then she walked across the room with that same, quick, nervous step and hauled the door open.

"You have to go."

Eames saw Goren's shoulders rise in a frustrated sigh, and he slapped the pictures roughly back into his folder. He glanced at her, and they stood. As they walked to the door, Sherry leaned through it, scanning the street. As soon as the detectives had passed through, Goren turned back to her. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sherry interrupted.

"You shouldn't come back here," she said. "You don't know…" She shook her head again, backed into the house, and shut the door, hard.

Goren pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. "I'm growing impatient with that," he said.

"Having doors shut in your face?" Eames grimaced.

He let out a deep breath, and focused for a moment on the yellow flowers growing parallel to the doorframe. Then he turned slowly on his heel, his eyes combing the yard, the flower beds, the hedges.

"What do you want to bet Nathan Harris grows his own roses?"

--


	25. The Roots Of Things Part II

He realized as he stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor of New York Memorial, for the second time that week, that there was no guarantee that Juliana would be there. He could have called her, of course, but that wasn't entirely the reason he'd elected to spend his lunch hour in the hospital. He was, now, almost entirely convinced that the person who had shot Jozua Everett was the killer he should have put behind bars instead of his sister. He felt a weird sense of responsibility, knew it wasn't totally merited, but needed to give in to this particular compulsion- checking on them, in person. He wanted to offer reassurance with facts, with the confidence he felt, but because the investigation was on-going, he hoped his presence would appease his conscience.

The door was closed, and he knocked softly, wondering how Jozua would react to the unannounced visit were he alone in the room. Goren couldn't help but find the lawyer interesting- both of Juliana's brothers were psychological mysteries, the sort of complex puzzles that he couldn't resist. The solutions were often terribly simple, but the coping mechanisms, the way humans recreated themselves around their pasts, had always fascinated him. It was his own, personal question.

He raised his hand to knock again, louder, when the door inched open and he found himself on the receiving end of an anxious expression that quickly faded. Juliana opened the door wider, tension visibly leaving her shoulders, and Goren wondered if what they'd talked about in the jazz club two nights before was really the source of her unease.

"Is something…" she began, then lowered her voice after looking over her shoulder. "Did you…"

"Close," he said, then changed the subject. "I came to see how you were doing." He nodded toward the inside of the room and smiled. "All of you."

Juliana stared at him for a moment, then her smile returned, and she stepped out of the way, holding the door open for him. As he passed her, the faint scent of sandalwood triggered the memory of their first meeting, and he realized how long ago that seemed.

The room was just a little larger than the hospice room where his mother had spent her final weeks, and as comfortably embellished. Across from the door, against a wide window, was an orange couch, and a matching chair faced the end of the bed. He could tell immediately that the plush, white blanket pushed to the end of the bed was hardly hospital issue, nor were the sheets, probably real silk, that were drawn around Jozua's knees as he sat cross legged in the middle of the bed. Goren suppressed a grin when he saw him, the lawyer's eyes wide behind his silver glasses, hair unkempt and on end from bed rest, wearing a black t-shirt with_Def Leppard_ embossed in red across the front. He looked fifteen, at most.

Jozua's expression changed when he saw him, his eyes losing their saucer shape, and he glanced over Goren's shoulder. There was the sound of the door closing, and he raised an eyebrow at his sister before he returned his attention to the Styrofoam box on the bed in front of him.

"Detective," he said, opening the box. "I have to say this is more of a pleasant surprise that I anticipated."

"Def Leppard?" Goren couldn't help himself. Of all musical tastes he might have picked for the sophisticated, refined Jozua Everett, vintage arena rock was the last.

Jozua leaned over the box, taking a bite of a sandwich that shed alfalfa sprouts, chewed for a moment, then pointed at his sister. "She was there too," he said, swallowing. "Nashville. June 2006. Can't even blame it on the eighties."

Goren looked at Juliana, who bit her bottom lip and skirted the edge of the bed, settling onto the couch. She affected a guilty expression, and Goren found himself surprised, once again, how easily she made him smile. He glanced away from her, back to Jozua, in time to see the lawyer look away from his face with an impish grin.

"By all means, Detective," he said, focusing once more on his sandwich. "Have a seat."

He'd meant only to stay a moment, expecting the atmosphere to be much heavier, given the circumstances, but their seemingly jovial mood was heartening, and he decided to take the invitation, especially coming unexpectedly as it did from Jozua. He bypassed the chair at the foot of the bed, and settled onto the couch to Juliana's left.

"Did River have to go back to Boston?" He found himself feeling disappointed at the thought.

Jozua said nothing, unscrewing the lid from a bottle of water and taking a sip. Goren glanced at Juliana, who merely shook her head, and didn't look at him. He realized then that perhaps something sensitive had taken place in regard to their brother, and so he let it drop.

"So um… how much longer do they say you'll have to stay in the hospital?" he asked instead.

"I'm checking myself out tomorrow whether they like it or not," Jozua said with finality. "I have an opening statement on Friday morning and I'm a week behind already."

"You can't be in court in three days," Juliana said wearily, as through the argument had taken place already. She looked at Goren then, and shook her head.

"Mmm," was Jozua's muffled response as he finished the last bite of his sandwich. He dusted his hands over the box, closed it, and moved it to the table beside the bed, then fixed his eyes on Goren.

"Detective… what does the name 'Nathan Harris' mean to you?"

Goren forced his expression to remain blank. In reality, he wasn't at all surprised that Jozua Everett had a mole at One Police Plaza. He was just the type to have his fingers sunk into every opposing official niche, and it fit his brash personality to suggest it directly to a detective. He shook his head, pointedly avoiding Juliana's eyes, which he felt on him then. She hadn't been able to tell Eames the name of the SRO at the time, but he knew that hearing his name now, she might recognize it, and he didn't trust himself to hide the truth in his expression with her.

"We talked to him… we thought he might have known one of the victims." It was true enough that it carried to his voice.

Jozua's sharp eyes narrowed slightly, and Goren had the sudden feeling that Juliana might have misjudged just how perceptive her brother really was.

"Did you know that he comes from a family much like ours?" Jozua asked then, rearranging his pillows and leaning back. He looked at Goren with a mixture of curiosity and smug consternation.

"How…" Goren began, before he stopped himself.

Now Jozua smiled- a cunning, pleased smile. "What was it you said about money?"

Goren was taken somewhat aback, though not necessarily convinced. It had only been four days since he and his partner had asked Nathan Harris to come downtown and talk to them.

"You sent people to talk to…what? Relatives?" He tried to make his tone light, but even he heard the strain. They'd uncovered no direct relatives of Harris' except for his nephew, and his brother, and they'd not exactly _uncovered_ him.

Now Jozua folded his arms. "He has an aunt in Pittsburgh," he said. "His mother's sister… she says the Harris boys' father was a devil. Turned his older brother into a monster. Who's… conspicuously missing, I think?"

A warm irritation coursed through Goren at Jozua's arrogant meddling, despite the fact that he understood its source- that psychological need for control. The lawyer had made a highly successful career of exploiting his own vice, whether he knew it or not. Despite the fact that this was all a power game for Jozua, Goren wondered if Juliana's brother had even paused to consider how his resourcefulness, employed this way, might have just given a serial killer a premature head's up on the detectives trying to stop him. He glanced then, just slightly, at Juliana, who met his eyes with a mirror of his own inner disquiet.

He looked back to Jozua, trying to decide between honesty and caution, when movement near the door caught his attention, and he focused on it. Juliana, who'd been looking at him, followed his gaze, and he felt her shift back, and sensed rather than heard her draw in a deep breath.

It wasn't hard to put it together. Juliana's reaction, and the less-than- slight resemblance of this other woman to the twins. She had the same subtly auburn hair and milk clear complexion, the same refined jaw line and downward curve of the lips. Even without the other stark elements of resemblance, the eyes would have been enough.

Peripherally, he felt Jozua turn his head to the door, and Goren was struck then, surprised, by the similarity in their carriage. Jacqui Everett's eyes maintained the same disinterested, half-lidded detachment that he'd grown used to in Jozua's expression, and the set of her shoulders was likewise coldly dignified, her back straight, her chin tilted just slightly upward.

She had paused there in the doorway, one manicured hand gripping the strap of her designer handbag, and her eyes flicked from Jozua to him, and he felt immediately as though he were beneath a microscope. She scrutinized his appearance briefly, then with a twitch of one corner of her lips and a minute crease of her forehead, she turned her gaze on her son. Goren didn't miss the fact that she entirely ignored Juliana.

"Shouldn't you be resting, sweetheart? All this excitement…" Her voice was chiding.

Goren felt a surge of anxious revulsion, and he shifted, the muscles of his calves tensing to rise.

"I should probably get going…" he said, but froze when Jozua glanced sharply at him and moved his hand- a quick, slashing motion against the bed. His eyes flicked to his sister, and Goren followed his gaze. Juliana had turned to stone beside him, and he wondered what was going through Jozua's mind. He wanted him to stay… but for what? When he turned back to look for the answer in Jozua's face, he'd already turned back to his mother, who had now approached his bedside. Goren felt a pang of sympathy watching him pull his face away from his mother's hand. It was strange, and sad, to see someone avoid something he himself had longed for all his life.

"Robert Goren," Jacqui said then, still not looking at him. "I recognize your voice from the phone."

Goren felt Juliana glance sharply at him, and he forced himself not to look at the floor. Every muscle in his body begged him to leave, but he held himself there, obeying that cryptic, silent plea Jozua had extended, and not knowing why.

"I see you are as deluded as my children," she added, then looked for the first time at Juliana. Goren felt his shoulders stiffen, but had no words for her.

"What are you doing here, mother?" Jozua blockaded her. "I told you not to come back." Goren heard the waver in his voice, accustomed as it was to power, and not seeming to expect it here.

Jacqui looked back to her son, and her wide lips curled up in a smile. "What happened to you?" she asked. "You were the only one with any potential." She traced the line of his jaw, and Goren saw the muscles of Jozua's neck tense.

The door through which Jacqui had come slammed shut, an awkward, belated crack that brought everyone's eyes to it.

Perhaps it was because his mind had become accustomed to the fact that Jozua and River were identical twins, but it took Goren a moment to realize what was different about River. He stood, right shoulder pressed against the wall, arms folded, smirk on his lips, with eyes only for Jacqui. Gray eyes, with their contrast of dark lashes.

No sunglasses.

"_Mother_," he snarled. Goren glanced at Jacqui, seeing total disinterest on her face, and then was distracted again by River's movement as he entered the room, keeping his back to the wall, toward the chair at the foot of the bed and sank heavily into it. He shoved his long legs out in front of him, wedging his feet roughly between the bottom rungs of his brother's bed. He never took his eyes off his mother, but crossed his arms and stared at her.

It didn't take all his years in narcotics, or any vast amount of perception, for Goren to realize Juliana's brother was high. He was only six feet or so away, not far enough to hide the pinpricks that were his pupils- a tell-tale symptom of the opiate. Goren glanced at Juliana, wondering if she saw it too, and the look on her face evoked more than his empathy. She knew. He looked away quickly before she could see in his face that he was witness to any of this.

Jacqui was the only one willing to recognize it, albeit in only a sharp, scornful hiss and a narrowing of her eyes as she turned away from him, dismissing him. Goren's stomach turned.

The moment Jacqui looked away, however, a fire seemed to light in River. A long dormant fire.

"You know San Francisco was only a half hour plane ride from Medford?" He slammed one foot angrily against the end of the bed, making his brother flinch. "You could have made a little day trip of it. Come watch your _stupid_ son die."

The word _stupid_ struck a harsh chord with Goren, sounding both puerile and weighted. He tried to glean understanding through the various expressions in the room: Jozua, uncharacteristically disconcerted, looked at the opposite wall, and in Juliana's face...there were memories there. Painful ones.

But on Jacqui's face there was nothing.

"You haven't changed at all, have you?" she said. "Too bad."

"Too bad _what_?" River snapped. "I can't get it right? I tried harder last time, I promise." It left his mouth in a mocking whine, and Jozua sucked in a deep breath.

"River. Shut up."

River's eyes, more bizarre and alien with the near absence of black, turned on his twin. "No." It was little more than a hiss, and then that disparate gaze was turned on Goren.

"So…I'm what… sixteen, I think? Or fifteen…I don't remember a lot of my childhood…"

"River…" Jozua interrupted, and Goren watched Jacqui's gaze swing away from River to his brother, and back. Juliana never moved.

River pretended not to hear. "I remember Dad was at a conference. She was a lot different if she knew he wasn't coming home…" His eyes flicked from Goren to his mother, narrowed, and then returned, a smile on his lips that Goren wanted nothing more than to escape from. "She knew where all her pills went. The Vicodin, the Xanax, the Hydrocodone… " Now he glared at his mother. "You kept filling them, though, didn't you?" he snapped. Then he laughed, but there was no amusement in the sound.

Jozua leaned back then, closed his eyes, and Goren saw the memory in his expression, unlike Jacqui's.

"What _are_ you talking about?" she asked. Convincingly.

River ignored her, turning that same, drugged smile on his twin, who didn't see it. "What did she give me that day, Joz? Kalonopin? How many was it?"

Goren looked at them all in turn. He saw Juliana's eyes leave River's face and turn on their mother, saw her shoulders stiffen and saw her stop breathing. He saw the anger in River's eyes vie with panic when his brother remained silent.

"Joz…you were there." It was barely more than a whisper, pleading. "How many?"

Finally, Jozua's eyes opened, and he met his brother's gaze for a long moment before he said: "It was enough."

Goren flinched at the sharp, choked sound beside him, Juliana's reaction to something he was sure she hadn't known, but River caught his gaze again, a discordant, triumphant smile on his face. "So you see," he said, pointing at Juliana. "She wins. _She_ got out in time." He glared at his brother, but directed his words to his sister. "I got it _all_ when you left, Jay. Poor little Riv…too _sensitive_, wished his mother loved him. Couldn't turn me to fucking stone like her, so she _hated_ me." The short laugh that followed was too high, overwrought.

Through all this, Jacqui had said nothing, standing straight, serene, beside Jozua's hospital bed. "Whatever ridiculous story the three of you have concocted for the benefit of your detective here…" she began, but Jozua cut her off.

"You know it's true," he said softly. Nothing could have done more to convince Goren then the utter lack of vehemence in Jozua's voice. No defensiveness… just truth. "If I hadn't walked in, hadn't _seen_ you put them in his hand…" His voice caught, possibly in anger, possibly something else, but he shook his head, and when he spoke again, the inflection was gone. "I wasn't supposed to be home… my debate meeting got cancelled. You _knew_ I wasn't supposed to be there."

Jacqui's face betrayed nothing, and beside him, Goren heard Juliana's voice, speaking for the first time since River had walked in the room.

"What are they talking about, Jacqui?" The words were low, but Goren heard the accusation in her tone, and he knew she believed it.

Jacqui, for the first time, displayed a reaction, though it came merely in the form of her folding her arms across her chest, and the arch of her eyebrows lowering. "I'm sure this makes you happy," she hissed at Juliana. "Turning them against me to the point that they lie to themselves…"

She stopped suddenly, turning her head sharply when River jerked his feet away from the bed frame and pushed himself to his feet.

He held his hands out toward her, fingers like stiff claws. "Just admit it, you psychopath," he said, his voice shrill. He crossed the space between them, Jacqui drawing herself up to her full height and glaring at him. Goren felt Juliana tense.

"River…" she began, but Jacqui interrupted her, glaring at her taller son, his eyes wild and bloodshot.

"You're pathetic," she said coldly. "You've done so many drugs you can't tell reality from your own ridiculous delusions."

Goren saw the muscles in River's shoulders stiffen, saw his chest rise in a deep breath, and saw him move one hand toward his mother. His instincts told him he was about to strike her, and he came to his feet on impulse. He knew this kind of anger.

Faster than he could move around the bed, however, River's hand shot out, but instead of connecting with his mother, he grabbed the edge of the bedside tray, an inch from her, and sent it, with the force of fury, crashing into the wall behind her. As it toppled over, water cascading across the floor, he whirled away from her and was out the door before any of them recovered from their stunned silence.

Jozua's eyes remained on the door for a short moment, then he turned on Goren and Juliana.

"Go," he said.

Both of them moved at the same time, Juliana released from her frozen surprise, and Goren needing no further encouragement. Juliana ducked out the door before him, and he glanced back in time to see Jozua's hand dart out as his mother tried to leave as well, his fingers closing on her upper arm.

He didn't wait to see what Jozua had in mind for her, but pulled the door shut behind him, and turned to look for Juliana. She was already moving down the hall, and he instinctively took a step in that direction.

Then he froze. What was he doing? Following her where, into what? It was a strange bit of providence, perhaps, that he'd been witness to River's paroxysm of repressed intensity, the airing of a secret that had never seen light, but he realized instantly as he stood watching her walk away that his presence today was not something she would be likely to appreciate later. He stood there, his shoulder pressed into the concrete of the wall, feeling impossibly awkward, one hand rubbing the back of his neck.

At that moment, he saw her step slow, then stop. Her shoulders drooping, her head down, she stared at the floor for a moment, then she turned slowly. She caught his eyes and held his gaze for a long moment in which neither of them moved, too far away to speak.

There was pain in the crease of her brow, strained bemusement, and her expression asked _how much more can I take _? She mouthed the words _"I'm sorry."_

Then she turned quickly away, her steps hastening down the hallway in the direction her brother had fled, and she disappeared into the elevator without a backward glance.

Goren took a deep breath, so many emotions vying within him that he could distinguish none. He glanced once more at the closed door of Jozua's room, chewed the inside of his cheek as he questioned the logic of leaving either of them alone with one another, then shook his head, turned away, and took a step toward the elevator.

The piercing tone of his cell phone erupting from the pocket of his suit coat startled him so badly he almost dropped it taking it out. He forced himself to close his eyes, take another deep breath, before he opened it.

"Eames," he said. "Sorry, I…"

"_Goren_," she interrupted him, and he heard the excitement in her voice. _"You need to get back here ASAP. Sherry Harris is here… and she's ready to talk." _


	26. What Lies Buried In The Garden Part II

Goren made good time getting back to One PP. As the elevator climbed to the eleventh floor, he found himself having a difficult time concentrating, bringing himself back from the hospital and into police headquarters, and he began to wonder if he'd made yet another mistake in judgment by allowing himself to become…no, actively seeking it, if he was honest… a more personal involvement in the life of a former suspect. There was something about even her family's dysfunctional unity that appealed to him. He understood it, and more, he felt like she could understand him, if it ever came to that, but now, so many of his feelings were inextricably tied to this case. It was a poor backdrop for any new relationship, no matter where it might lead.

Eames had sounded excited on the phone, and he wondered what Sherry had already told her. He wondered if she'd convince her to wait to tell the whole story until he got there… he supposed it depended on the Sherry's demeanor. The motivations for her change of heart could be multi-fold. It was evident to him that she'd seen something on the television, the news coverage plastered across the headline channels for the past several weeks, that had struck her as suspicious at the time. Perhaps it was guilt that had brought her here… the nagging _what if_. Goren had tried to play on that possibility by bringing out the pictures of slain children, leaving no room for doubt in the palpable nature of the crimes. That, and he'd wanted to scare her, for the sake of the case and for the sake of the genuine concern he felt for her son. The closer Harris believed he was to being caught, the more danger the boy was in, Goren thought. Perhaps fear brought her here today.

The elevator slid open, and the first thing he noticed was that his partner had been replaced at their desk by a teenaged boy. Goren observed him curiously as he moved in that direction. He looked to be about fourteen, fifteen… the right age to be Patrick, Sherry's son. He sat with his chin in one hand, elbow propped in the middle of an open book- a thick tome that was likely some school text. His hair was overlong, hanging into eyes that were trained on the copy machine across the room, where with a quick glance Goren found Maria, Ross's shapely twenty-something secretary.

He saw Eames in Interview One, sitting beside Sherry with two cups of coffee on the table before them. She was facing the window, and he saw her look up, and her posture straightened, her gaze fixed on him, her lips parting as though she had intended to start speaking to him before he made it into the room. Whatever this was, it was big. He bypassed the desk, eliciting not even a glance from the kid, and slipped in the door.

Sherry turned, facing him over her shoulder, and Goren knew instinctively that she hadn't slept since the last time they'd talked to her. She wore no makeup- her eyes marred by the thin, dark skin of exhaustion, and she looked older because of it. The hair pulled back into a pony-tail was oily, like the sheen of her skin… often it was another symptom of sleeplessness, neglecting to shower, as one day bled into another and all sense of action in time became hopelessly muddled. Goren knew it well.

He took a chair from the side opposite the two women and pulled it around to the end of the table, so that he sat relatively close to his partner. Eames, with one leg drawn beneath her, resumed her casual posture and gave Sherry an encouraging smile, trying to set her at ease.

"Can you tell my partner what you told me?" she asked gently.

Sherry looked at her cup of coffee, lifted it and nodded while she took a drink. She sat the cup down and rubbed her eyes with her fingers.

"So… yesterday Patrick was supposed to get the bus home from school, right? I mean.. he's fifteen in a month, he's alright for a few hours while I'm at work, you know?" She glanced at them both, perhaps seeking accusation, and finding it not forthcoming, she continued. "Except yesterday, Pat gets sent up for fighting.. some kid in the cafeteria bullying him about god knows what, you know kids these days…" There followed a short, strained laugh, and then she cleared her throat. "Anyway… I'm at work so they call _him_. His uncle. Instead of calling me at work. Guess it's around his uncle's an SRO.. I know Pat's school has one… maybe they know each other and he thought Nate would whip some sense into my boy or God knows…"

"Hey…" Eames said gently as Sherry's words began to tumble out without a pause for breath. Goren pulled a tissue from his pocket and passed it to the other woman, who wiped the tears off her cheeks with a hand that shook visibly. He _almost_ felt guilty for the pictures he'd shown her, but if this played out like he thought it was going to, it was time for her to face the truth. He knew, better than most, that the truth was very rarely pretty, or easy to stomach.

"Just take it easy," Eames said. "You're safe now, no matter what, ok? Patrick's safe."

Sherry looked over her shoulder, where Patrick Harris was now drawing something in his textbook, and then glanced again at both detectives before drawing in a shuddering breath and nodding vigorously.

"So I get home 'round ten last night like usual, and Nate's car is out front. After yesterday…" she looked at Goren, swallowed. "He's never there that time of night… not unless he comes by after one of Patrick's games. I went in and Nate is sittin' on the couch in the dark, Patrick is in his room… where Nate told him to go when he brought him home from school. Pat said Nate sat there on the couch like that and didn't say anything until I got home. Just sat there. The one time Pat came out to get something he said Nate came up off the couch a little ways and gave him this look… like he was gonna hit him." Now Sherry looked at Eames. "You know what look I'm talking about… he knows it too… saw it enough from his dad."

Eames brow furrowed slightly, but she nodded. Goren wondered immediately if Sherry assumed all women were victims of abusive men, and he instantly felt a twinge of concern regarding Sherry's motivations for being here. He rubbed two fingers across his lips, then he asked:

"So… Patrick told you he felt threatened… because he'd seen his father look like that before he would hit him." Goren trusted the interpretation of that expression… the ability of someone that had been on the receiving end of more than one blow to interpret that subtle change in stance, or the sudden otherness in their eyes. He remembered it in his own father, and to a lesser extent, in his brother.

Sherry was nodding again, draining her cup of coffee. As she set it back down, she said: "But that's not all of it," and Goren leaned forward casually, eager for this story to be something he could use, but trying not to appear unsympathetic.

"Anyway… I come in like I said, and Nate's there in the dark on the couch. Scared the shit out of me, but I was trying not to act nervous, you know?" She smiled at them weakly, clearly proud of her effort. It was, Goren thought, perhaps a commendable feat. He smiled back at her. "I turned the light on.. that's when I saw him... and he just looked at me. Sat there on the couch and stared at me like … I don't know. First thing I thought was that he knew I'd talked to you and that…" Her voice cracked, and she took a deep breath. "It was all I could do to look straight at him like nothing had happened and ask where Pat was, all the time thinking 'bout those pictures…" She stopped again, and Eames filled a cup of water from the dispenser behind them and handed it to her. She took a drink and continued. "That's when he called Pat in there… god I almost fainted… and made him tell me what had happened at school… all the while he's sittin' there on that couch just staring. Then… when Pat had told me everything… Nate asked me what I was going to do about it, and I told him. I told him me and Pat would talk and there'd be some repercussions. I try to be fair, you know… but I'm no pushover." Again, she looked between the detectives for approval, and Eames nodded again for her sake. "So I told him that," Sherry went on. "And he just got up. He walked across the living room and he said _"There's not much time left for you," _and he's out the door, just like that." She lifted her hand, dropping it back to the table with finality.

Goren felt his eyebrows lower, and he glanced at Eames. He saw in her expression that Sherry had already gotten this far in her story prior to his arrival. It sounded very much like a threat to him, the most disturbing aspect being what Sherry had pointed out moments before; none of them had any idea how much Nate knew about the ongoing investigation, how closely the detectives were focusing on him. He inwardly cursed Jozua, wondering who else besides that distant aunt the lawyer might have stirred up.

He faced Sherry. "So… you're here because you believe your brother-in-law may be the killer we're looking for…" Sherry didn't respond, but met Goren's gaze with wide, unhappy eyes. "Do you have any… evidence? Did you… see anything?"

Sherry looked at Eames now, then back to Goren. "Well… yeah. I saw him with Norman… the day he disappeared. Nate killed him."

-

-

Five Hours Later – 7:22 PM

Residence of Sherry Harris- Across the Street

Nathan Harris

He had killed him.

His brother.

Nathan sat, facing away from the house, in the front seat of his car, a block away, watching the lights. The slow, revolving blue in the dashboard of the black SUV, the headlights of the CSU van, blinking in and out as people passed back and forth in front. The sound traveled far in the cold winter air, through his open window, and he could hear the occasional clink of metal, the thump of a shutting door, the tin of a voice through a radio.

He knew what they would find.

He remembered that day.

Patrick had been ten then, still innocent, still malleable. Nate had gone to take his nephew to a movie… he'd tried to keep him out of the house as much as he could, but an argument had begun between Norman and Sherry before he arrived. It had escalated, in its way, to screaming, to Norman's inevitable gravitation toward Patrick. When he could no longer hurt Sherry, when she covered up her bruises with makeup and tried harder to please him, it only made Norman more angry the next time… more angry that he wasn't "getting through to her," and so he turned on her son. He began to pick at all Patrick's habits, telling him he was a "momma's boy." He took away his toys, took away his books, told him he would grow up to be just like his mother. He did it to hurt Sherry. He did it because he was evil, and because no one had ever stopped him.

Nathan hadn't intended to kill him. When he'd arrived at the house, a dim night, the street deserted, he'd tried to talk them down. Tried to convince his brother to cool off, to take a drive, so he could Sherry and the boy out of the house, but something had provoked Norman beyond reason this time, and so Nate had pushed his car keys into Sherry's hand and told her to go, to take Patrick, and not come back until he called. Then he'd held Norman off long enough for them to go- he was smaller, but he was a cop. He still remembered the sound the tires had made on the concrete of the street, an angry, rubber shriek.

Then his brother had turned on him. Angry, looking to wound him, not physically… he knew better by then… but with words. He'd always laughed at Nate when they were kids, the younger boy red-faced and shaking in an attempt to withhold the impulses that Norman's taunting stirred to the surface, calling him a chicken, a coward, because he wouldn't lash out like they did.

He didn't know what changed in him that day. He couldn't remember Norman's exact words, what had pierced that long festering rage and brought it exploding, putrid, to the surface. All he remembered was feeling red, as though he had transformed into energy, heat, something ethereal and powerful. Something released.

It was easy to recall the feeling now, because he'd felt it again since. With Jhosa Moore, with Brendan Carmichael. What was it? Vindication? The hand of God giving him the strength to do what he must? Or was it…

Nate rubbed a hand across his eyes, felt the pounding in his temple that had started the day before and wouldn't go away. He pulled his cigarettes from his shirt pocket, lit one, and took a long pull. He held the smoke in, the nicotine only marginally alleviating the queasiness in his stomach.

No. He'd had to do it. He'd known that the moment he'd looked down and the red haze had bled from his eyesight so that he could see what he'd done, to his brother. The endorphins cooled his blood, trickled along his spine and a voice in his inner mind had begun immediately to quiet that rising clamor of horror, guilt. To blanket it in reason. _To protect and serve_. This was the oath he had taken.

He'd stood, staring down at Norman's body on the floor, his brother's blood, his father's blood, leaking from more stab wounds than he could count, spreading across the linoleum of the kitchen floor. The knife was in his hand… from the wooden block on the counter… he'd no memory of picking it up, no memory of it using it against is brother. But he remembered the way the blood had slid along the edge of the blade, and dropped to the toe of his shoe. And the way his fingers had felt sticky on the handle.

It was the same blade he'd used to kill Carl Eldridge, only they'd never caught that. He wondered if they'd found that bullet wedged in the baseboard of Jhosa Moore's house, or had matched those bullets in the Carmichaels to Carl Eldridge's gun, or if they'd ever realized that the switchblade, cleaned off and placed carefully in Jeff Long's pocket was not his, but the one Kieran Carmichael had used to ply his trade, scraping off the trade-marks of aspirin and carving new symbols. Spreading deceit, and escapism. Did they understand that it was all a cycle, and that he was ending it?

A sharp pain shot through his head again, and he coughed, the smoke from his cigarette erupting from his lungs in a startled cloud. He glanced once more in the rear-view mirror and turned the keys in the ignition.

It was all coming to an end.


	27. Decay

The silence struck him as he walked through the door. He shut it softly, laid his unopened newspaper on the table to his right, and stared for a confused moment at the alarm keypad. When armed, the security system greeted him with a comforting whine until he entered the code, but now the display screen was blank, and the green light that glowed below it told him something disturbing.

He had forgotten to set it before he left that morning. It was something he had not done since he'd installed it.

His eyes went immediately to the standing cabinet across the room, cold crawling along his skin, but found the doors were still shut. So too was the door of his bedroom, the padlock still intact. He remained there for some few moments, frozen in concentration, listening, but there was nothing. No whispered voices, no footsteps. His eyes raked the coffee table, the particular arrangement of it: two magazines, a seed catalogue lying open beneath the portable phone that he'd forgotten to replace on the receiver, the ashtray, empty, on the corner.

He remembered then that he'd smoked a cigarette that morning, perusing the catalogue before work. Hadn't he put it out in that same ashtray? He took a few steps toward it, his heart thudding in his chest, and then stopped.

No. Not this morning. He'd called the distributing company the morning before, cancelled his order for spring bulbs.

He hated the thought of them going to waste.

Sighing, partly in mourning for the spring, so near now and yet so impossibly distant, and partly with impatience, for the detectives were just as close. A matter of hours, days at the most, and they would be here.

Asking him more questions, with answers in their eyes.

Wanting to come through his door, through the locks.

Touching his things.

Outside, a car door slammed, and with a jolt of adrenaline, Nate whirled toward the door, crossing to the window and shoving the blinds roughly apart with two fingers. He squinted through the moonless dark, his eyes taking too long to adjust, indistinct shapes moving near the street. He heard voices, blinked, pressed his face closer to the window, not breathing against the cold glass.

Slowly, the shapes became people: two women, one of whom he recognized by her peeling laughter. He realized with a start that he hadn't, in his panic, noticed the car: a long, white Cadillac, a far cry from the detectives' overlarge SUV.

He scanned the street, putting his hand on the doorknob, and for a moment considered stepping onto the porch, just to be sure, but then he frowned, and wondered why it mattered when they came. They would still come.

His hand left the doorknob, shifted of its own accord to the deadlock, and turned it. He let the blinds fall back, then slid the chain into place. His eyes strayed to the alarm keypad, the green light mocking, but he turned away without setting it.

Crossing the room, he felt the sense of panic that had gripped him moments before ebbing away, leaving only an ache in his muscles, and a weak feeling in his knees. He walked to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stared at the sparse contents. Celery, brown at the edges. Half a stick of margarine. Something in a plastic container.

He hadn't eaten in days, and he was not in the least hungry.

He shut the door, circled the corner, in the living room once more, and stopped in the same way before the tall cabinet. He drew the chain from beneath his shirt, unlocked the cabinet with one of the three keys that never left his person, and opened both doors wide.

The first thing that his hands found was a book, Mark Twain, the cover worn to velvet softness, the pages thick and uneven in the way of old books. He held it close to his face, savoring the way that it smelled, the nostalgic feelings that the story within stirred almost painful. It had been one of his favorites, this tale of a boy without boundaries, summer days, grand adventures.

He remembered too, the way his father had chided him, blamed the books his son loved for the faults he perceived. He didn't like sports, was clumsy with his hands, shy. His father had hated those things in him.

He replaced the book, lifted the lid of an old shoe box, and even more reverently took out a thin comic, still in its plastic sleeve. He'd spent years replacing everything his father had taken from him, everything that had been lost to him in his childhood, and this, the first issue of Batman, was his most treasured possession. He drew it partway from the sleeve, then frowned, imagining the big detective doing the same, imagined them seeing these things which he had been so careful to conceal, to make his very own.

He slid the issue back, slowly, and laid it gently back in the box. He gazed for a moment longer at the cover, then replaced the lid over it. There was a sharp pain in his chest, and despite the chill in the house, he felt sweat on his forehead.

He left the doors of his cabinet, his childhood, open, and returned to the kitchen. Beneath the sink, he found a half-empty jug, turpentine he kept about for cleaning his paintbrushes.

Now it would serve another purpose. Rash, he didn't know, but he couldn't take the chance. Wasn't willing to.

He forced himself to focus on the acrid smell of the chemical, on the pattern of distribution as he poured it over shelves. He refused the sorrow and the disgust that threatened his resolve. _Time was running out._

He glanced behind him at the door, then poured a trail of the liquid to his bedroom, unlocked the door, and made a path for the flames. If there was something he'd missed… a fiber he'd overlooked, blood…

He paused, mid-motion with the nearly depleted bottle poised at the open closet door. _What did it matter now?_ Had he not wanted them to know, all this time? To know his reason? He looked at the bottle in his hand, and he hesitated. Was he afraid? Of prison, of death? Suddenly, he could not recall emotion, could not remember feeling anything but anger for so very, very long.

He upended the bottle, aware in some distant way that he'd not answered his own questions, or justified his action to himself. There was only that familiar, anxious anger, that years ago had replaced the fear.

-


	28. Decay Part II

Goren, hands behind his back, paced the room. A strange twist of circumstance had brought him back to the same room at Riker's where two weeks before he had come to see Juliana. He paused at that same, small, cross-hatched window, and stared hard at the city across the water, immersed in a late morning fog.

Their brief chance to sift through the remnants of Nathan Harris' home with the arson unit, and the two days Harris had spent in the hospital had given them very little to work with. Speculation, mostly. They'd tracked down the aunt in Pittsburgh, albeit without Jozua Everett's help, and had gotten what amounted to a lecture on deadbeat fathers and the right way to raise a child. That, and the fact that Harris' father had died almost twenty years ago, of heart failure. Even Sherry's admission about the last day she'd seen her husband was, putting Nate Harris at a crime scene, with the car, hardly a smoking gun, nor was Sherry a credible witness, especially since what looked to be her husband's murder had taken place in _her_ home. If Goren hadn't thought killing his brother had been an act of sudden, irrepressible rage on Nate's part, it couldn't have been planned any better- a nice package of circumstantial evidence, hearsay, and uncorroborated testimony to deliver to even a novice defense attorney.

He turned away from the window, found his partner watching him. She wore the same expression that he felt on his own face. A slight frown, a tightness of the brow.

They didn't have him, and they both knew it.

He cast a furtive glance at the door, then took the few steps between himself and the chair beside Eames.

"Anger…" he said, dragging the chair out from the table and sinking into it. "I think it's the key to getting through to him."

"You think he knows what he's done is wrong?"

Goren thought for a moment, staring at his hand where it lay over his binder. Then he shrugged. "I think he's admitted that much already, trying to cover his crimes up. It's not about whether its wrong in the eyes of the law… I think he knows his motivations aren't… entirely noble."

"Jhosa Moore?" Eames nodded. "And the Carmichael boy."

Goren nodded. They hadn't been clean kills, had not been merciful deaths. If there was anything of remorse, or self-doubt, in Nathan Harris, that was the door.

As if on cue, a lock disengaged and the door scraped open. Beside him, Eames straightened, gathering herself, and as the guard ushered Harris into the room, Goren felt a surge of something akin to anger himself, a need to have this over. He felt as though he was standing at some boundary, one foot in the dark mud of the recent past, with the beginning of peace at his shoulder, and this case was the last vestige of that other life. It was a case that had begun at rock bottom, and was forever associated with emotions he was ready to leave behind.

Self-doubt, blame, fear, anger. Here was proof, bandaged and being handcuffed to the table, that the power of such emotions destroyed men.

Another man, younger, well dressed, carrying a briefcase, pulled out the chair beside Harris, dragging it down the length of the table as far from the accused serial killer as possible without moving to the end, but as he began to sit down he seemed to realize the tenor of his actions, for he turned red, cast Harris a mortified look, and tried to scoot the chair closer to him with his thigh while not being obvious at it._Public defendant_, Goren thought to himself, and felt sorry for the kid, who looked as though he'd perhaps graduated from law school the previous summer.

Harris didn't seem to notice. His eyes, bloodshot, were trained on the detectives, and try though Goren might, he could distinguish no emotion there. This was a third man in Nathan Harris. Not the confident, friendly SRO of their first meeting, nor the tired, angry man of their second, but something else entirely.

"Do you know why we're here, Nate?" Goren asked him gently, opening his binder before him, picking up his pen.

Harris stared at him, blinked slowly, and Goren immediately wondered if he was drugged…tranquilizers, pain medication. That might work in their favor, and might not, and he mentally berated himself for not asking before he'd gotten here. It was not the sort of thing he generally overlooked.

Nathan's tongue inched from between his dry lips and back like an indolent lizard, and he turned his head to the door for a long moment in which one hand jerked, arrested with a metallic chink by the short chain that bound him to the table. His lawyer flinched visibly.

"I got to it first," Harris said, turning back to him and smiling slowly. Goren felt Eames look at him. He remembered what the arson specialist had told him about the fire, about its origins. The bookcase, with its partially melted lock and charred comic books, remnants of a childhood recollected.

"And now we can't touch it, right?"

Harris' smile broadened, and he nodded.

His lawyer, staring at Goren, noticed the movement, and looked at Harris, startled. His mouth worked soundlessly, then he looked at the detectives again as though hoping for guidance before he shook his head cautiously at Harris.

"You uh.. you shouldn't…you don't want to…"

Harris silenced him with one glance. A curious, contemplative glance, head tilted slightly as though he'd only just noticed the presence of the public defendant, who swallowed and turned pale.

Beside him, Eames cleared her throat, and he glanced at her, seeing a gentle smile on her lips, but not in her eyes. She folded her hands on the table, leaning toward Harris.

"Your roses are… beautiful, Nate." His head snapped around to face her, and his lips curved over his white teeth in a pleased grin. "I was never very good at growing things," Eames continued jovially, and Goren relaxed against the back of his chair to see where his partner would lead their suspect.

"The key is in the fertilizer," Harris told her, the chain jangling as he moved one hand from his lap to the table. "Organic." His smile faded then, and his eyes grew distant.

Now Goren leaned forward. "Roses," he said, keeping his tone conversational, bringing Harris' eyes back to him. "Is it the flower itself that represents purity, or the color?"

Harris said nothing.

"Did you know…" it was Eames again. "You were right about Valerie Eldridge. She and her little girl are doing well… without Carl."

Goren saw the almost imperceptible movement of the muscles around Harris lips, but he betrayed nothing openly. It could have been little more than amusement at what he thought was a clumsy attempt to goad him into a reaction, or it could have been genuine pleasure at the idea of vindication.

"You know Devon could have had a chance too, Nate," Goren said, and slipped the picture from beneath his notepad, laying it on the table between them. Harris' eyes flicked to it, and back, and Goren saw a sudden anger.

"What chance? By the time they're that age there's nothing you can do for them," he snarled, and snatched the picture, crumpling it in his chained fist. "If someone had gotten to them earlier…" He stopped, released the ruined photo against the table.

"You mean like… the social worker?" Goren asked cautiously. "The one that worked with both Devon Eldridge and Damien Moore?"

"Those people don't care," Harris said. "They're too worried about bureaucracy and procedure to see what's happening in front of them."

Eames shifted. "So they didn't help you, when you were younger. You or your brother? They left you with your father."

"You could have turned out differently," Goren jumped on the opening. "You didn't have to turn out like your brother."

Harris's chest swelled, and he opened his mouth, to deny it no doubt, but Goren interrupted him. "You didn't have to turn out like your father if someone had gotten to you sooner."

"I am not my father," Harris hissed.

Goren's only response was to pull out the picture of the bound and tortured Jhosa Moore. He slid it close enough to Harris that he could see it, but not touch it. The public defendant leaned forward for a better look, then turned away, his knuckles pressed against his lips and his eyes closed.

"You tried to tell us something about cycles, I think," Goren said. "You meant to use Carl Eldridge's gun, the one you took from the first crime scene, to kill Jhosa, but he fought you. He made you angry." He touched the picture with the tips of his fingers, drawing Harris' eyes to it. "This is your anger."

"No," Harris said, his voice flat.

Goren gave him what he thought was the smile a patient parent might give an impudent child. "Oh come on, Nate," he said. "Men like this make you furious. Fathers that don't take care of their children. Fathers that turn their children into monsters."

Now Nate looked at him, cocking his head again. "Don't they make you angry too?" he asked, his tone indistinct.

Now Goren leaned forward. "Yes!" he said, and didn't skip a beat in pulling the last picture in his arsenal out. Brendan Eldridge, face down on the saturated carpet of his family's home, his head nearly severed from his body. "But I don't take my anger out on children."

"I don't…" he began, but Goren interrupted him.

"This is revenge. Revenge on your father."

"_Revenge?"_ Harris was incredulous. "How can you say that? You're a cop. You know criminals raise criminals."

"Like you."

He sat back in his chair. "No. I…no." He shook his head firmly, looked at the wall.

"Where's your brother, Nate?" Eames asked then.

Harris smiled.

"Sherry told us you were the last person she saw him with. She's scared for you to be near her son. She believes you're a killer."

The smile faded. His face fell, his eyes still on the wall. "It's too late, isn't it?" he said mournfully. "I… tried to get there in time. I was… afraid, for too long."

Goren met Eames eyes for a moment, and when Harris' lawyer straightened in the face of this dangerous territory, Goren held his hand out, palm forward. It silenced the inexperienced, younger man like he knew it would.

"You tried to stop your brother," he said to Harris, "before he could do the same thing to your nephew that your father did to the two of you. But you didn't get to him in time, like no one helped your brother and you, and it makes you angry. That's why you're compelled to repeat it. You won't stop, because it doesn't make your childhood go away, and that's what you want. You aren't trying to save others… you're trying to save yourself. Trying to free yourself from what you _know_ you are."

"No," Harris whispered, then his gaze swung to Eames, and he smiled. "You said yourself that Valerie and Miranda are doing well… and little Samantha. She'll be ok now."

Goren sensed Eames shoulders move back just slightly, and he realized that neither one of them knew the name of Valerie Eldridge's daughter, who had not been born when her husband and son were killed. Had he kept up with them all this time, watching, like he watched his nephew?

"I am not evil," Harris said then, looking at Goren.

Goren drew in a deep breath, returned Harris pleading stare, and felt sadness for him. He remembered the mirror, the fury and the fear, thinking he was nothing but a product of his past, without control, trapped in the quicksand of his parents' mistakes. That seemed trivial, in the face of this madness.

"No," Goren said, and moved the picture of Jhosa Moore closer to Harris. "This is what you are. Not a vigilante, not a savior. A murderer." He moved the picture of Brendan Carmichael across the table next to the other. "This is your father. A man who destroys children."

"It was too late…" he began, but Goren slammed his palm down across the photograph and interrupted him.

"_No.__Now_ it's too late."


	29. Beneath The Roses

It was less than twenty-four hours after the interview with Nate Harris.

Goren hesitated even now to call it an _interrogation_, because in the end, his intuition had backfired. Instead of eliciting a confession with his insight into the motivation he felt Harris was only barely able to hide from, the serial killer had lapsed into a catatonic silence after Goren's last words. Both he and Eames had tried various other ways to get him to talk, but he'd simply stared at the picture on the table, eyes vacant. They'd finally given up, meaning to try again the next day (when Goren would attempt to persuade the prison staff not to drug their suspect).

But they hadn't had the opportunity. Harris had gone in for arraignment the next morning, and the judge had scoffed at the ADA's recommendation for remand, and released Harris on a minimal bond. He was, after all, a cop, and his defense attorney hadn't had to contend with the suspicions of two detectives that Harris was something more. Not even the ambiguous recording of the interview the night before had been enough to convince the DA to go the grand jury with additional charges.

The news had hit them both hard. Though neither Goren nor Eames was particularly surprised, they were both tired, frustrated, and stretched thin grasping at straws, which was all Harris had given them.

They both knew he was guilty, and he was back on the street because _they_ couldn't prove it.

Goren glanced at the time on the console of the SUV, and frowned. With one thumb, he turned the volume dial on the hand radio up, then blew out an impatient sigh. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eames look at him.

The first thing they'd done while they'd waited for Harris to make bond was arrange a tail; that much, at least, the department hadn't questioned. Between themselves, another car, and a plainclothes officer on foot, they'd managed to keep Harris in sight since he'd left the courthouse at eleven AM. He'd had lunch, gotten a haircut, read the newspaper at length in a coffee shop, and then walked several miles until he'd stopped outside the Moore's apartment complex, the scene of the first crime they'd investigated. There he'd sat in the cold on a bench across the street and watched, the last location the tail had radioed from.

"What's he doing?" Eames asked in a low voice, having waited in silence for almost an hour.

Goren caught her eyes, read the strain and the worry there. He shook his head. He had an idea what might be going through Harris' mind, but he didn't suggest it aloud.

Eames frowned, her brow furrowing. "We can't even move on him for walking in that building. There's no guarantee we can keep the tail on him long enough either…" She trailed off and shook her head. "Now I know how you feel when people question your hunches."

In different circumstances, he would have smiled at that.

"I don't think…" he began, when the radio in his hand crackled to life and Sgt. Davis' baritone burst from it at top volume.

"_Advise. Target is on the move again._" There was a moment of silence as Goren thumbed the volume back down._"He's entering a cab on the corner of Cherry and 134__th__. Heading south."_

"Ten four," Goren answered, letting his finger off the button just in time to hear Kennedy inform them he was on it. He and Eames sat without speaking as they listened to Kennedy radio back directions at intervals, until Goren suddenly spoke into the radio again.

"He's coming this way." He craned his head to peer into the growing darkness outside. When he hits McDouglas Avenue lose him. We'll pick up."

Eames looked at him. "I hope he puts _one_ foot on the other side of that yellow tape."

Goren's brow creased in thought. "Wouldn't that be too easy?" He smirked.

Eames' lips drew a line, and they again spent several long minutes in silence, broken at last by Kennedy's voice from the radio saying: "_All right guys. He's all yours._"

McDouglas Avenue intercepted Rhodes, a long, quiet lane, and the remnants of the two bedroom home, mostly gutted by the fire, stood at the north end. The detectives had parked the SUV at the south end, and as the radio lapsed back into silence, Goren turned the key in the ignition, killing the heat and the steam from the tailpipe. A deeper quietness settled over them just as the headlights of a cab swung around the far corner and pulled to a stop in front of Harris' house. The door opened, and from the distance of perhaps sixty feet, they saw Harris step out, lean back inside for a moment, and then shut the door. The cab hesitated at the curb for a moment, then lurched away, coming toward them with an abrupt squeal of its tires.

They were parked with the rear of the car toward the house, so the lights from the cab failed to illuminate their figures inside. It did, however, create a moment of blindness for both of them, and once the cab had passed, the street was once more enveloped in darkness and Harris was no where to be seen.

Eames turned fully around now and looked through the back window.

"Now where'd he go?" she snapped.

Goren's eyes searched the rear-view mirror. After a moment, he picked out the shifting of shadows across the lawn.

"There he is. Going for the back yard."

Eames faced forward again. "The back yard?" Then before Goren could speak, she added: "The greenhouse?"

Goren looked at her. "Why…" he began, then something struck him with the force of shock. He pictured the morning he and Eames had been allowed on the property with the arson unit, with the understanding that they were only to look, and touch nothing. The door to the greenhouse had been chained, but the condensation had been mostly clear of the glass, and they had seen Harris' handiwork inside. Lilies, irises, poppies, and in the very back, white roses, twining along a lattice mounted against one side of a wooden box. A very_large_ wooden box.

He felt the hair on his arms stand up.

"Eames…" he said. "What was he doing outside the Moore's apartment?" He looked at her, and she lifted her eyebrows, waiting for him to tell her. "Something I said must have gotten through to him. About Jhosa, and the way he died. I suggested it was the same way his brother died… the same rage behind it." He paused, letting this cement. "I know what he did with the body."

Eames' eyes narrowed briefly in thought, shifted toward the rearview mirror, where now a light was visible through the trees, a soft glow from the greenhouse in Harris' back yard. Then she looked at Goren again.

"Beneath the roses," she said, almost a whisper. Her mouth twisted in a grimace. "So what's he doing in the greenhouse?"

Goren glanced too at the mirror, then shook his head as his hand went to the door handle. He was stepping out of the car as he said: "I don't know, but I'm going to find out."

Eames followed her partner, who had not waited on her, and caught up with him as he edged across Harris' front lawn. Harris had closed the gate, tall and wooden like the privacy fence that extended from the edge of the house. The glass roof of the greenhouse was only just visible above it, but Goren peered through a crack in the slats of the fence. Eames did likewise, holding her breath, though she knew it was doubtful Harris would hear them; the greenhouse was more than ten feet from the gate. Her eyes shifted to her partner in time to see his gloved hand take the black metal latch of the gate and push down; the hinges protested, a loud squeal in the otherwise quiet winter air, but Goren seemed not to hear it.

He wedged his body through the smallest possible opening, and as Eames followed him, she moved her hand reassuringly above the holster of her gun. She frowned when Goren didn't do the same. The greenhouse door stood open, though they approached at an angle, and Harris' back was too them. Either he hadn't heard the gate, or he had chosen to ignore the sound. The smell of charred wood mingled oddly with the floral cacophony, and Eames pressed a finger under her nose to stifle a sneeze.

Goren stopped in the door, his bulk taking up most of it, and he took another step inside to permit Eames. He cast a pointed, sidelong look at his partner, then back to Harris, who was standing at the opposite end of the greenhouse, perhaps ten feet away, facing the roses, his hands limp at his sides. Eames scanned the room quickly for anything that might serve as a weapon, and glanced over his clothing for any bulge that might conceal one. She jumped when Harris spoke, the sound of his voice unexpected.

"You do know you're trespassing, detectives."

Goren heard no tone of accusation in the words; merely a statement of fact. The play of light across the back glass and the darkness outside showed him their reflections to one side of the rose bush.

"This is a crime scene," Goren reminded him, but expected Harris' quick reply.

"Not the greenhouse."

He countered it shortly. "Oh?"

Harris said nothing, and Goren wondered if he was looking at their reflections in the glass, or at the roses. His head had not moved when he spoke, and his image was obscured by the lattice and the vines. Eames shifted beside her partner, looked at him. Her head jerked around again to face Harris as she caught movement in her peripheral vision, and her gun was out of its holster. She stopped just short of pointing it at him, for Harris' hand had only moved from his side to the rose bush.

He touched one flower gently, turning the white bloom toward himself. He leaned forward, as though to hold it to his nose, but stopped, as if startled by some thought, then let his fingers fall slowly away from the flower.

Goren took a step forward, stopped. "What were you doing outside the Moore's apartment, Nate?" He infused the words with a tone of curiosity, not of antagonism.

Harris didn't respond, but his posture straightened, and he continued to stare at the roses with his back to the detectives.

"You were remembering, weren't you?" Goren said, keeping his voice low. He took another step toward Harris. "You were remembering how it felt. That anger. At Jhosa." He took another step, now only a few feet from Harris. "At your brother."

Harris said nothing, but his hand moved again to the rosebush, to the same flower. Goren saw his shoulders rise and lower, once, twice.

"You thought about what I said, didn't you? Why you do this. Why you can't stop. You know I'm right."

"I'm not evil," he said softly, and if Goren had been any farther away, he wouldn't have heard it.

"No," Goren said, and he meant it. "You aren't evil." He paused, feeling in his gut that Harris was at that point, when he was ready to speak, and needed little prompting.

He was rewarded for his patient silence after only a moment. Harris, thumb tracing the white petals of the rose, said: "You don't understand. My brother… he was exactly like our father. What he would have done to my nephew…I couldn't let it happen."

"You were angry."

"_Yes_," Harris hissed. "He…" Whatever he had intended to say faded in a sharp inhalation, and the fingers around the rose clenched, and he crushed it, dragging his hand down the stem, across the thorns, and he ripped it from the bush. He took a step back, finally facing the detectives, and Goren could see moisture in his reddened eyes. He glared at Goren, his eyebrows drawn darkly down, and again he felt Eames shift beside him, wary.

But Harris' instead looked away, to the hand aloft before his waist, and opened the fingers quickly. The crushed petals of the rose caught there fluttered to the ground, and he shook away those that clung. There was more than one spot of blood where the thorns had grazed him.

Goren took a deep breath. "Your father never took responsibility for what he did. But you can, Nate."

Harris head shot up, eyes now more frightened and full of misery than anger.

"You're_wrong_ about me. I _did_ want to help… to change things… to stop it." His voice was decisive.

"But you lied about it, Nate," Goren tried. "People won't take you seriously if you lie about it. You have to take responsibility for people to listen to you." It was convoluted, somewhat threadbare reasoning, but Nathan Harris was not a rational being.

Harris only stared at him, frowning.

"We know what you did with your brother's body, Nathan," Eames said then, and added a lie: "We have a search warrant for the greenhouse coming down tomorrow morning. You have one chance to do the right thing."

Harris' gaze swung to her, to Goren, and back.

"You have to admit what you did for anyone to understand," Goren told him.

"Otherwise, everyone will just think you're a cold-blooded killer. An evil man." This from Eames.

"Like your father, Nate."

"I am _not_ like my father!" Nate shrilled at Goren, his fingers curling into claws. "That bastard crack head was my father, and that drug dealing son of a bitch Evan Carmichael, and Carl Eldridge with his fists and his hate… _he_ was my father." Harris was shaking now, took a step toward Goren, and stopped. "I saved those other kids, the women those kids would have grown up to marry, the children they would have spawned. It never would have stopped!" The lilt of his voice dropped, and his eyes widened. His mouth worked soundlessly, then he looked at the ground and whispered. "It never would have stopped."

Goren took another step toward Harris, hesitated, then said. "You tried. You stopped your brother. You buried him there," he indicated the wooden planter.

Harris looked up again, eyes dry now. "And see what beauty I made out of it?" He smiled proudly, looking confidently at Goren as though expecting him to challenge the fact, then at Eames. His smile wilted beneath her scowl. "You said they were beautiful. You said Valerie and Miranda were ok now. You understand." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I _had_ to do it."

Eames held his gaze for several moments, then nodded slowly as Goren moved behind him. For a brief second, Harris' eyes lit with gratitude, and a cautious smile touched his lips. It vanished when Goren's hands caught his wrists, and the steel went around them.

"Nathan Harris," Eames said. "You're under arrest. For murder."

-


	30. Sunlight

-Two Days Later-

-

He'd told himself that going to Jozua Everett's apartment and presenting himself to the doorman was effectively the same as calling. The truth was that he didn't want to talk to her on the phone. He wanted to see her, to tell both she, and Jozua, that it was over, that Harris was behind bars now, with the only question remaining whether he would face death, life in prison, or Bellevue, which was unlikely. He'd covered his tracks too well to qualify as insane, even though Goren suspected that he was, to some degree or the other.

The phone call the door man had made was short, and Goren was waved to the elevator without circumstance. As he stepped on, it occurred to him that he couldn't be sure Juliana was even here, though much of him doubted she would have gone back to her apartment alone. The news about Harris' confession hadn't hit the media yet. In fact, Goren had come straight from One PP, not long after they'd led Harris out to be escorted to Bellevue, where he'd be under psychiatric evaluation pending his sentencing.

He stepped off the elevator, finding the anterior space of the seventeenth floor penthouse just as Eames had described it. White marble, white walls, like Jozua's office. He'd crossed only part of the short distance to the door when it opened, and he froze.

It was Jozua that appeared there, in slippers and a robe over his nightclothes, though it was three in the afternoon. He shut the door quietly behind him, and Goren didn't need a medical degree to assume it was a high likelihood the younger man should still have been in the hospital. He looked a good deal worse than he had the last time he'd seen him- ashen, with dark circles barely concealed behind his glasses.

Jozua's lips twitched in a slight frown at what Goren assumed was his own startled expression. "What is it detective?" he asked, pulling his robe tight around himself as he crossed his arms.

He couldn't deny the disappointment, and he hesitated a moment, wanting to ask about her, and, he realized then, about River, but there was no mistaking Jozua's demeanor, or the not so subtle point he made by standing with his arms crossed in front of the door he'd just closed.

Goren shifted his weight from one foot to the other, suddenly wishing he_had _called instead. "I thought you'd like to know," he said softly. "We got the man that shot you."

Jozua's arms shifted slowly to his sides. Then he brushed the back of one hand across his nose. "He was after her wasn't he?" was all he said.

Goren offered him a small nod, and Jozua inhaled a deep breath which immediately sent him into a spasm of coughing. It wracked his shoulders, and his eyes squeezed shut in evident pain. Goren took a step toward him, but stopped when Jozua looked back sharply and waved his hand.

"I'm ok," he said weakly. "I'll be even better when I find out what prison the son of a bitch is in."

Goren raised an eyebrow, but was loathe to speculate what Jozua meant by that. He remembered what Eames had said about the lawyer's ties to organized crime, and changed the subject quickly.

"How's your brother?"

Jozua had removed his glasses, and cleared the moisture from the corners of his eyes before he fixed Goren with them. For a moment, his expression was defensive, but to his surprise, it softened, and he looked down. "Bad," was all he said.

Goren started to ask more, but stopped himself. Prying into the world behind that door would do little good here. "Will you… tell Juliana…" he began, but at that moment, the door behind Jozua opened, and she was there. Jozua turned his head and they locked eyes for a moment, some silent communication passing between siblings, then he shrugged and stepped past her into the apartment. The interior door closed heavily, leaving only the two of them in the hall.

"Hi," she said, her eyes soft, her voice not sounding expectant, as though she would not have been surprised if this were only a social call.

"Hi…" he said. "I just wanted to let you know…it's over."

Juliana's lips parted, perhaps not expecting his words, then she took a deep breath. "When?"

"He allocuted this morning…"

"He shot my brother?" she interrupted.

Goren nodded. He almost added that the bullet was meant for her, but he could see in her face it was gratuitous. She turned briefly to look at the door Jozua had closed behind him, then back to Goren.

"Thank you," was all she said.

Goren held her gaze for a moment, seeing only then the way her arms were folded across her chest like her brother's had been...her stiff, guarded posture. Sadness mingled with his other emotions, the intangible, unnamable feelings of the past few weeks.

He nodded, and made an effort at a genuine smile. "Ok," he said softly, acknowledging both what she had spoken, and what she had not. And then, because he couldn't help himself, he added as he backed away a step: "If you ever need anything…"

Juliana's face registered something else then, regret, perhaps, but he didn't want to see it, and he only nodded again and turned away, taking several steps toward the elevator, wanting to escape the silence behind him.

"Robert. Wait."

He almost didn't, though later he would find it difficult to explain what compelled him to keep moving. But the tone of her voice, startled, apologetic, stopped him. He cleared his expression before he turned back to her.

Her mouth opened to say something, then she again looked at the door behind her. Then she glanced past him to the elevator, and was moving toward it as she offered him a weak smile, its usual brightness undermined by her tired eyes.

"Let's go for a walk," she said, and she pressed the down button. The elevator slid open and she was inside it before she met his eyes again. Confusion vied with curiosity, and worry, for she seemed on edge, but he did as she asked.

It was almost four in the afternoon, and the day was clear, bright, and cold. Silence stretched awkwardly from the elevator across the lobby and out onto the sidewalk, where Juliana finally stopped and waited for him to catch up. He paused beside her, and she let out a deep breath.

"I'm sorry," she said. Her brow furrowed, and then she laughed, but it was a distressed sound, without humor. She moved then, south along the sidewalk, tucking her hands beneath her arms, her breath a white cloud on the air. She was in a t-shirt, sweatpants, and sandals, and Goren had to suppress the instinct to offer her his own coat; it was bitterly cold, but it didn't seem the right time for the gesture. He walked beside her, and waited for her to talk.

"I didn't mean to seem…" she began, eyes on the sidewalk, her long hair hiding the expression on her face. "This is been probably the worst two weeks of my entire life." She said it matter-of-factly, and Goren wondered if the absence of emotion was a product of disassociation or her own inner strength. Then she added: "Except for you."

He was startled by that, and didn't know how to respond. Her demeanor was strained, the situation odd. He couldn't ignore the impression that though she had joined him outside, she was nevertheless leading him away. He looked at the ground, shoved his hands in his pockets, but said nothing.

Her pace was slow, and when she stopped, he halted as well, and they were facing each other. The cold had drawn color to her cheeks, a sheen of moisture around her eyes. Or was it just the cold?

"I mean that, Robert," she said. "If I had met you at any other time in my life…"

"Juliana," he began, a needle of resentment burrowing into him that she felt she must apologize. The thought that feelings only barely acknowledged in his own consciousness had been so transparent to her... he was suddenly glad for the cold, because it hid his embarrassment.

But she dispelled it with her next words. "I don't know if you felt it too… maybe not." It was sincere, and she looked at the sidewalk, seemingly embarrassed herself. When she looked back to him, her smile was genuine, amusement in her eyes, and she laughed nervously.

"I must really be losing my mind," she said. "I'm never that forward."

Goren felt a soft smile on his own lips, part sympathy, and part hope, though he didn't trust this rollercoaster of emotions. He wanted things to be clear, but were they ever?

He didn't give himself time to think about the wisdom of it, because he could only conceive of a simple answer to the question he thought was in her eyes. He took the single step between them, and bent his lips to hers. His own surprise at his rashness came a moment too late, a surge of adrenaline as he tensed in expectation of rejection, more embarrassment, but through that he felt the warm pressure of her lips, and the line of her body as she moved closer to him, and the softness of her hands against his face. The tension left him, and he held her to him, and felt a long dormant, human desire in his stomach at the fleeting heat of her tongue against his.

Then the moment was over, and she buried her face against his shoulder, letting him hold her. She was shivering now, her skin cold through the fabric of her t-shirt. A car passed them on the street, turned the corner, and disappeared.

He had to force himself to relax his arms when she slowly pulled away from him, and found once again as she looked into his face that he had no words for her. There were many things he would have liked to say, to ask her, but none of them like what she said then.

"I have to leave New York, Robert. I don't know for how long." There was the expression again, that he'd seen upstairs, and now he understood it. It was regret, and sadness.

He stared at her, blankly, and managed only one word. "Why?"

She looked at the ground again, rubbed one foot against the pavement, then glanced upward, toward the seventeenth floor. "My brother…" she said, and caught his eyes again. "…is a wreck. And he's scared." Her tone sought his understanding. "This entire experience has been like… ripping a band aid off an old wound. The hospital, his mother, and there's stuff between he and Joz that…" She trailed off, wrapped her arms around herself again, and looked down. "I finally talked him into going to therapy. He should have gone a _long_ time ago, but I didn't…"

"Juliana…" Goren said into her subsequent silence. "You can't always save the people you love."

He expected her to argue, as it was something he knew from personal experience was difficult to accept, but instead she nodded. Her expression was bitter.

"Did you know they made a pact between each other to lie to me about what happened to them at home?" There were instantly tears in her eyes. "They didn't want to _add to my own pain_. I can't imagine how bad it must have been for them to think…"

He touched her shoulder, stroked her upper arm gently. In many ways, she was so like him. Carried the weight of guilt for so much that she couldn't change.

She shook her head, as if she hadn't meant to speak of it. "I'm going to help him now. I couldn't do it when they were kids, but… he's going to need me." Her eyes swam. "He's buried all this hurt and anger since he was a child… now it's all going to come out, finally."

"It has to, Juliana." Of course she knew that. "Maybe something good will come out of all this after all."

He only belatedly heard the wistful sound of his words, and the slight shift of her eyebrows showed him she had heard it too.

"Robert…" she said. "Maybe…" but she stopped, and sighed, looking again down the street. She rubbed her hands against her arms and looked unhappy.

"It's ok," he said, not sure if his concession was what she wanted, or even if it was appropriate. When she glanced at him, he wasn't sure what the question in her expression meant, but he added anyway: "I'll be here when you get back."

It was perhaps too strong of a statement, because it implied he would wait for her, but it gave her an opportunity to set him free.

Instead she smiled.

-

Epilogue Will Be Along Shortly


	31. Epilogue Part I

---The epilogue was originally going to be just one part, but because I am officially going to write the sequel (with InfinityStar), I decided to continue it through to the goings-on in Boston in 2 months story-time.

-

Epilogue, Part 1

March 13th, 2009

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York

Robert Goren

-

He edged closer to the painting, thinking he could see the indentation of another medium, the vestige of a pencil sketch, possibly, beneath the gauche finishing. It seemed possible that it was both intentional, and unintentional, for the ghost-like forms behind the blue coating of the background appeared nowhere else in the piece. Surrealists had a propensity for ambiguity, if anything.

It was on nights like this that her missed her the most.

Or was it the idea of her? Their time together had been so short, and he wasn't sure if one could miss a person's presence if they'd never really shared it. Since she'd left for Boston over two months ago, there had been countless emails and phone calls, about everything imaginable, but talking to someone about art wasn't the same as looking at a piece together. More and more often in his daily life, he wanted to turn to her and say "look," and he had stopped himself several times from telling her that. Written the lines and then erased them. There was enough for her to think about, helping her brother make monumental changes in his life, without the addition of a lonely detective that pined for her at home.

He moved from that painting to another, regarding the curious, uncharacteristic landscape with interest, and smiled at a memory of this morning's digest of email. It was not only with Juliana that he'd been communicating via the internet (and improving his sadly lacking electronic skills in the process), but he had recently begun corresponding with her brother, River.

He remembered the first email the strange young man had sent, completely unexpected. It was, in fact, a collaboration with his sister- a lengthy, hilarious diatribe against the bipedal tendencies of silver-screen aliens and the inherent illogic behind human beings defeating alien visitors in apocalyptic science fiction movies. It had been utterly fascinating to see the differences in the writing- he knew River had written it all, but he had been able to tell when he was translating something his sister had said. There were instances of elegant, philosophical musings about pop culture that degenerated into dense scientific exposition. He'd read it a score of times, knowing Juliana had probably put River up to sending it from his personal email address to see what would happen, and at last, he'd replied with a like analysis of Star Trek (a favorite of his as a kid) and his musings on the effects of excessive exposure to warp speed. When he'd talked to Juliana later that night, she'd told him he'd had her brother in tears of laughter, and he and River had been exchanging email ever since, on everything from the idiosyncrasies of professors at MIT and string theory to the mathematics of music (one of their mutual favorite topics).

It was heartening, in many ways, to see the changes that were taking place in him. He hadn't spent much time around him in person, but Juliana had been quite open with him at his gentle urging (knowing she needed to talk but was too concerned about dragging him into her personal difficulties). He knew River struggled with severe anxiety, avoidance issues, depression. The boy he'd been writing to was coming out of a shell, thanks to his sister's constant support, and a very expensive psychiatrist.

This morning, he'd had two new emails. The first was from Juliana, who'd spent three pages telling him that River had gone with her to a movie, then out to eat, without his sunglasses. It felt good to be happy for her… to experience someone's joy, and he imagined it was good for her to share it with someone that appreciated the significance.

The second email had been from River himself, who didn't mention the sunglasses, but had sent him a picture. It was of him (still with the shades) and two others, in lab coats, in front of a large, ambiguous machine, their background a huge screen with numbers, symbols. River, arms crossed, had a huge, child-like grin on his boyish face. The caption of the picture said only: "NASA bought it!" The text of the email said: "Will you come to my graduation?" He'd felt such a mixture of things then… excited and proud of the kid, and overwhelmingly touched that that he would want him to be there when MIT gave him a PhD in aeronautical engineering.

There'd been only one way to reply to such a request; there was no way he would miss it. The date was almost three months away, but he'd told Ross that same morning he would be out of town on May 20th, regardless. And he'd told Eames why. He tried to tell her more... to explain his laughter when he read his email at work, and answer her questions when she asked them. She seemed to approve in some ways, but be skeptical in others, but he tried to make it clear he cared about her opinion.

He stepped aside as a couple pressed closer to the painting he'd been staring at, and backed through the surprisingly large crowd to circle toward the next piece. This was a much larger event than he'd anticipated; he'd recognized a photo of a particular piece in the Met's circular, a fairly unknown Ukrainian artist, Pisarev Gennadiy, whose work he'd seen on Jozua Everett's office wall long months ago. He hadn't expected to have the time to make the show, but he and Eames had wrapped up their most recent case unexpectedly that afternoon, and he had found himself with several days off.

He turned then to cross the room to the rest of the exhibit, took two steps, and froze. It had been over two months since he'd seen Jozua Everett in person. He stood now beside a shorter, older man, and as Robert saw him, he took a sip of his champagne and happened to glance over the glass in his direction. There was a moment as he looked at him that felt overlong to the detective, and he experienced a slight thrill of disappointment at the thought that the lawyer either didn't recognize him or intended not to acknowledge him. Then Jozua lowered his glass, leaned down to say something to the man beside him, who nodded, and then he walked toward him.

"Robert Goren," Jozua said by way of greeting, and his smile seemed genuine, although Robert wasn't sure he could have told the difference. It was, however, the first time he could remember Jozua calling him by his name, and not the usual, flatly delivered "Detective."

Robert returned the lawyer's smile, knowing his own would betray the tenuous fondness he had for Juliana's brother. "Jozua," he said. "Been a while."

"It has." He took another drink from his glass and turned for a moment to look behind him. He snapped his fingers at a passing server, waving her over, replaced his empty glass on her tray, and procured two more. When he turned back, he held one out to the detective. "I have to say I'm a little surprised to see you here."

Robert took the glass, took a small sip and tried not to make a face. Champagne had never really been his thing. "I'm here twice a month, at least," he told Jozua. "You?"

"Depends. I'm usually too busy, but I made time for this." Now the smile that lit his face was so like his twin brother's- boyish, and pleased. He scanned the room, his eyes returning slowly to Robert's. "I financed all this. My first somewhat philanthropic act, if you consider art to make the world a better place."

"Of course it does," Robert said. "Happy birthday, incidentally."

Jozua, in the process of raising his glass of champagne to his lips, paused mid motion and stared at him, the look on his face plainly surprised. Then he raised an eyebrow, took a drink, and said:

"Just another day. It wasn't something either of us… really celebrated, growing up."

It made Robert sad how there was so much that stirred bad memories with this family, and sadder that he related so well to it. "Things can always change," he said, meaning to be comforting, but knowing it would fall short.

"I appreciate the sentiment," Jozua said, a touch of amusement in his tone that reminded Bobby that this was not River. Jozua Everett had either divested himself of the pain of his childhood, or was simply too in control of his emotions to let anyone see it. Perhaps even himself.

"I was disappointed to hear that our dear Mr. Harris is now free of the consequences of his actions," Jozua changed the subject, catching Robert off guard.

"Free?" He repeated. "That depends on what you believe about the afterlife." Nathan Harris had lasted less than three months in solitary confinement at Rikers, having hung himself with a bed sheet from the bars of his cell.

"Afterlife?" Jozua snorted, a sardonic grin on his lips that told Robert in no uncertain terms what he thought of that idea. The expression vanished instantly though, and his eyebrows drew together. "Hell is man-made, Detective. I would rather have seen him rot in prison, subject to all the tortures of incarceration."

Robert felt uncomfortable enough in the face of the lawyer's unfeigned spite that he forced himself to take a drink of his champagne, despite his distaste for it. To his surprise, however, Jozua's expression softened and he smiled into his own glass of champagne; Robert wondered if making people feel ill at ease was something he found amusing.

"You remind me of my sister," Jozua said, but it wasn't possible to tell in what way he meant that.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Robert said anyway, and smiled.

Jozua opened his mouth, then closed it again, a half smile on his own lips as he turned away for a moment, glancing toward the man whom he'd been speaking to earlier. When he looked back to Robert, he held his gaze, eyes open and pale and unreadable.

"So you've not forgotten about her," he observed.

Robert was confused by his tone. He felt his brow crease, letting it show on his face. Jozua continued to stare at him, and Robert realized how little emotion the lawyer's eyes reflected.

"I talk to her almost every day," Robert told him.

Jozua's only reaction was a slight tightening of the muscles around his eyes, a twitch of his jaw line. He looked down, took a long drink of his champagne, then gazed into the glass, rubbing his thumb along the stem. Then he said, without looking up, "How are they?"

The question utterly surprised him. He remembered Juliana mentioning several weeks before that her brother never answered his phone when she called.

"Better," he said softly, unsure whether he should explore this. "I'm surprised you haven't talked to them…" He let that hang there, and watched Jozua contemplate telling him the truth, telling him that he wasn't ready to face the reality of his childhood.

"I'm busy," he said instead, but didn't look him in the eye. He drained his glass and snapped his fingers at the server, and exchanged the empty one for a full. "Someone has to pay for it all."

Robert knew Jozua was paying for everything… the psychiatrist River was seeing, the apartment they lived in in Boston, the rent on Juliana's vacant apartment in Queens, and all his siblings' expenses. Now, however, Robert knew something more about Jozua's curious fortune; the first few million of it had been part of a dual inheritance from their grandfather, and Jozua, with his economics degree and real-estate savvy had turned it into a fund which meant, according to Juliana, that he never had to work a day in his life if he didn't want to. It was a blatant excuse for avoiding what he knew he'd hear if he talked to his sister or his brother. Robert himself had heard some of it from Juliana, as they'd both found some sort of comfort in sharing the stories and the emotions of their childhood.

"Are you going to his graduation?" he asked, guessing that revealing his insight could have only a negative impact here.

Jozua's eyes flashed up, and narrowed defensively. "Of course I am," he snapped. "Do you think I don't know what it means that he finally did this for himself?"

"I know you do," Robert said it carefully, his voice soft. Despite Jozua's aloof, disconnected demeanor, he clearly took deep offense to the idea that he didn't care, very much, for his siblings. As little emotion as he chose to reveal, this was a man who had taken two bullets for the sister he was too reluctant to speak openly with.

"He'll never think I'm proud of him," Jozua said, very quietly, and Robert was shocked to see the hint of moisture in his eyes. He seemed to realize the slip in his composure at the same moment, and he covered it by taking another long drink of his champagne, color beginning to appear in his pale cheeks, and Robert felt a pang of sadness for him.

"I don't believe that," he said.

"What do you know?" Jozua bit, sounding like an impetuous child. Then he looked away, sucked in a deep breath, and when he turned his face back, he shook his head and smiled, a complete, disturbing one-hundred eighty degree shift.

"Come on," he said. "I'll introduce you to Gennadiy."

-


	32. Epilogue Part II

- The purpose of the extended epilogue was to set up the character dynamic as it is when the sequel starts. I leave some things open to your interpretation. There are some things that will make more sense to you in regard to River if you've read the optional chapters that are on my website. Also, there's a great drawing of Jozua and Juliana I just put up (I'll be re-drawing Riv soon). Access it from my ff net profile page.-

-

-

Epilogue Part II

May 22nd, 2009

Boston, Massachusetts

-

-

It had been a strange and awkward day, and things were only just beginning to edge toward a semblance of normalcy.

The graduation ceremony was the first "hooding," as publicly receiving a PhD was called, that he'd ever been to. He'd sat in the audience with Juliana and wondered if he was almost as proud of the kid as his sister was. River had walked across the stage, blue hair and all, and had beamed like a ten year old when they'd put that piece of paper in his hand.

It was the first time in years Bobby had wondered whether he'd made a mistake not sticking with his own brief college experience. He had learned early on, however, that professors, as a general rule, didn't like to be argued with, and he'd felt boxed in as a university student. Too many of his teachers had seemed to feel that a person should operate from a specific viewpoint regarding humanity and psychology, but if Bobby had learned anything as a detective, it was that the human mind followed no pattern.

"Where are you?" Her voice was soft, with a hint of amusement. It broke into his thoughts and he glanced at her, smiling.

"I'm glad I got out when I did," he said, teasing her. She was months away from finishing her second PhD thesis.

Juliana laughed. "Narrowly escaped stagnation, did you?" She smiled, and Bobby felt a sense of wonder at her intuition. She edged closer to him in the wooden booth seat as someone staggered dangerously close to her. "I can't believe we're here," she added, and cast him a meaningful glance.

He understood her surprise at their situation. He shared it. The Barking Crab was the _last_ place on earth he would have imagined for River Everett's graduation party. A live band occupied one corner, belting out a montage of Irish folk music and Rolling Stone's ballads that was a bit hard on the sober ear, and the aroma of shellfish and hops permeated the place. The whole south side of the building opened onto a wide deck that overlooked the harbor, while the north side opened onto a swath of lawn littered now with kids from the local colleges.

"Where'd they go?" he asked, leaning down so that his lips almost touched her ear. The band had started up again.

Juliana turned almost fully around in her seat, scanning the crowd as she took a drink of her beer. "Who knows?" she yelled back over her shoulder. When she looked at him again she grinned. She opened her mouth to say something else when someone landed ineloquently in the seat across from them.

"Damn it," Jozua said, balancing a plastic cup in one hand. He took a sip of something clear and grinned over the rim at them. "So much for dinner," he said. "This is the only thing consumable in this rat hole."

"What is that, water?" Juliana called. "You light-weight!"

Jozua set the cup on the table. "Martini in a plastic cup. My first experience with it." The lawyer was anything but himself tonight, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with a pleasant flush in his pale cheeks.

Bobby couldn't help but smile, a little relieved at his change in attitude. Jozua has said almost nothing to him since Bobby had met up with them at the airport, and the younger man's mood had only deteriorated over the last thirty-six hours.

"Where's Riv?" Juliana asked then. "I thought you were with him."

Jozua waved a hand toward the deck, and it seemed he pointedly avoided looking at Bobby. "He's out there. You wouldn't believe these M.I.T. people." He laughed, and took another drink. "The governing mathematics of water-fowl. For fuck's sake."

"Didn't he just land a contract with NASA?" Robert clarified for fun, wondering if the alcohol would get him talking.

But the answer came from beside the table. "He sure as hell did!" River, still clad in his wide-sleeved PhD robes with the hood pulled comically over his head, smiled brightly at them. There was a cup in his hand, identical to his brothers, and he pointed it at Jozua and said: "If you think governing mathematics is interesting, wait'll you hear about moving dimension theory."

Jozua shook his head. "I can't believe they pay people to sit around and make that shit up. It doesn't make a bit of sense."

"That's just because you don't understand it," River waved the cup in a dismissive manner, and part of his drink sloshed over the edge onto the table. "Bobby gets it, don't you?"

The detective _did_ understand the premise behind it, but before he could open his mouth to agree with Jozua that it was a little far-fetched, the lawyer suddenly pushed himself to his feet, drained his cup, and set it back heavily on the table with the sound of cracking plastic. "Well, talk to him about it then," he said to River, and shouldered past him, heading for the outdoor bar.

River's gaze followed him, and when he turned back to the table, his expression was plainly confused. "What the hell is wrong with him?"

"I think he's just drunk," Juliana said quickly, and glanced at Bobby out of the corner of her eye.

Bobby looked at the table, twirling his mostly empty beer cup against the wooden surface. Drunk, maybe. Jealous, yes. When he glanced up again, River was looking over his shoulder once more in the direction his brother had gone.

"I'll be back in a minute," he said, and then he was gone too.

To his surprise, Juliana's reaction to the momentary tenseness was merely to lean the side of her head against Bobby's shoulder.

"I didn't see that one coming," she said, her tone a mixture of amusement and weariness.

"It could be worse," he offered.

Juliana was silent for a moment, then nodded. "I hear he does have connections to the mob." She raised her head then and looked at him, her eyes grave, her forehead creased in concern. Bobby stared back at her until one corner of her lips twitched, and then they were both laughing.

A moment later, she was wiping the moisture from her eyes. Taking a drink of her beer, she shook her head. "I feel like a jerk for laughing. Really." She composed her expression, except for the slight smile, and looked Bobby in the eye. "Am I really worth all this?"

"I'm no stranger to dysfunction," he reminded her, though what he wanted to say was "_every minute of it." _ Then he thought perhaps he should have, because Juliana averted her gaze and drained her glass. She propped her elbows on the table and leaned her chin in her hands, staring across the crowded bar.

He felt like a teenager, and not for the first time that weekend. Despite the months of talking on the phone and through email, neither of them had brought up that moment on the sidewalk, and they'd both avoided the topic of a future between the two of them. He'd wondered more than once if perhaps they were both waiting to see if the feelings that had developed between them were real, or a product of an emotionally taxing point in both their lives. When he'd seen her at the airport the day before, he'd known immediately what the answer to that was on his behalf. It was knowing how to take the next step that was the hard part.

He leaned forward, his own elbows on the table, twining his fingers around his empty glass. He watched her for a moment, she seeming lost in thought as she stared toward the deck, and he wondered if she was thinking about him, or her brothers. He understood her conflict only too well; in retrospect, his mother had taken so much emotional energy from him he'd had none left to give. In a way, he resented Jozua's spiteful manner this weekend, because he knew it bothered her, despite her effort to laugh about it. He also understood that, like his mother had not been able to help her illness, there were deep wounds in this family, not of their own making, that might never fully heal. That was what she'd meant when she'd asked him _"am I worth all this?"_

"Have you… thought about whether you'll stay in New York?" Better to start at the beginning, where it wasn't complicated.

She didn't seem to hear him for a moment. Then she nodded slowly, and looked at him. "As opposed to Boston? Riv's moving back to New York. Besides…" she smiled. "The city has it's good points."

He smiled at that, whether or not there was any double entendre. He focused on his glass again, tracing the rim with a thumb, and considered how blunt he was prepared to be.

"I'd like to…continue to see you…"

It wasn't him that had said it. He looked up at her, and she met his eyes. Before he could respond, she leaned forward and kissed him, a light, tentative brush. He caught her face with one hand before she could pull away from him and returned that kiss, and with it, he hoped, his answer.

When he finally let her go, she opened her eyes slowly, and searched his face. Somewhere in the moment, the fingers of one hand had laced through his. She looked there now, and moved her other hand over his.

"I can't promise it'll be easy," she said, her voice low. "I've got a couple of kids, you know." She glanced sideways at him, and there was humor there, but seriousness also.

"I think one of them will be happy about it," he said, smiling.

"Jozua will get over it, Bobby… it's not really me he's upset about, anyway."

"Riv?"

She nodded. "He's incredibly protective of him. Some of the things I realized since…" she trailed off, and shook her head, staring out into the crowd again. "Now if I could only get _him_ to a shrink…"

He disentangled his hand and moved his arm around her, touched his lips to her head without kissing her. He knew that he was taking a chance, but part of what appealed so much to him about Juliana was her compassion, and though her brothers were taxing, they were a part of her. Logic said her own sense of guilt and her worry for her siblings would hinder all her other relationships. She had, in her way, tried to warn him, but he'd followed his mind and logic all his life, subjugating the desires of his heart.

He was forty-six years old, and he was ready to take a risk.

Juliana leaned closer to him, into his half embrace, and he felt her hand on his thigh. Her hair smelled vaguely like patchouli, mingled pleasantly with the familiar sandalwood perfume. For a long moment, he just held her, comforted that though they could hold a conversation for hours, they didn't have to talk. His eyes had drifted mostly closed, listening to the music, when he felt her shift.

He regained his focus just as River sank into the booth seat across from them with a curious grin. He didn't speak, but stared at them until Juliana spoke.

"When are you going to take those robes off? You look like a Jedi."

River's smile faded for a split second as her words sank in, then it returned, even wider. "Thank you," he said, readjusting the folds of his hood with a flourish.

"Where's Joz?" Bobby dared ask, wondering if the two of them had perhaps worked things out.

River dropped his hands to the table. "Who cares? He's being a dick." He upended another cup, this one looking suspiciously like bourbon. The protective instincts the kid stirred in him compelled Bobby to suggest that too much alcohol was a bad thing, but tact stayed his tongue.

"How many of those have you had?" Juliana said it for him, and he almost smiled. They were often on the same wavelength.

River set the empty cup down between them and shrugged, but looked his sister directly in the eyes and affected no display of guilt. Then he turned his attention to Bobby.

"I'm playing a show in New York Tuesday night," he said. "You should come."

Bobby was a little thrown by this. "Show?"

River made a circular motion over the table with both hands. "D.J." he said. "I write music. Psychedelic trance." He held up his hand, the one with the tattoo. It was a physics equation, the mathematical symbol for the escape velocity from earth. "My stage name," he said, smiling.

"Do people have a problem saying it?" Bobby asked him, and he laughed, grey eyes alight. Laughter suited the kid.

"Eleven Two," River was saying now. "That's what they call me. I've been writing since I lived in San Francisco." Riv stretched a hand across the table toward his sister, tapping his fingers against the wood. "Tell him I'm good," he said, more like plea than a command.

Bobby looked at Juliana, and wondered what the expression was on her face. She was silent for a moment, her mouth slightly open, then she blinked and glanced at Bobby with an odd smile. "He's a genius," she said.

River beamed at her approval, but turned the expression on Bobby. "So you'll come?"

"Riv…" Juliana began, but Bobby cut her off.

"Sure," he said. "As long as I'm not working, I'll be there."

He felt Juliana look at him, but didn't turn his head. He remembered being like River once, desperately wanting someone's attention, their approval.

River held his gaze for a moment, the smile still on his lips, then he glanced slowly down at his empty cup. Before either he or Juliana could speak again, he was moving, back across the room.

There was a brief silence, then Juliana said casually: "It's not too late to change your mind."

He tightened his arm around her. "I love psychedelic trance," he said, smiling widely and deliberately misinterpreting her.

-

The OFFICIAL end of The Garden of Vice.

Thanks to everyone that stuck around this long (those that communicate, and those that don't).


End file.
